SOURCE: Wolfe, Gregory. “Muggeridge One, Two or Three?.” In Malcom Muggeridge: A Biography, pp. vi-vxiii. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1995.

In the following excerpt, Wolfe points out the seeming contradictions between perceptions of Muggeridge as journalistic iconoclast and Christian apologist.

I give you the end of a Golden String,           Only wind it into a ball, It will lead you in at Heaven's Gate           Built in Jerusalem's Wall. 

William Blake

As a media figure for more than half a century, Malcolm Muggeridge understood the strange metamorphosis that turns an individual into an image. His face, his voice and his name were multiplied and reproduced innumerable times—on radio waves, television screens and in books and newsprint. For decades he had provided the news-hungry with dispatches from Our Own Correspondent in Cairo, Calcutta, Moscow, Washington and other points around the globe. At the dawn of the electronic age, he became one of...