SOURCE: Ingrams, Richard. “Epilogue.” In Muggeridge: The Biography, pp. 247-52. London: Harper San Francisco, 1995.

In the following excerpt, Ingrams reports on the varied assessments of Muggeridge's career that appeared upon news of the writer's death.

Malcolm's death was reported throughout the world and there were lengthy obituaries in all the British and most of the major American newspapers. They ranged from the affectionate memoirs of his many journalistic friends to the pious platitudes of the Catholic Press. The word ‘irreverent’ was in constant use. The New York Times paid tribute to his ‘impeccable prose style’, a writer in the Guardian called him ‘the most gracefully tongued and limelight-drenched cynic since Diogenes’.

Some years previously Malcolm had asked his old friend A. J. P. Taylor to deliver his funeral address, but it was not to be, as Taylor pre-deceased him. Proving, however, that Malcolm's hunch had been right, Taylor...