SOURCE: Weales, Gerald. “The Most of Malcom Muggeridge.” Commonweal LXXXVI, no. 1 (24 March 1967): 21-2.

In the following review of The Most of Malcolm Muggeridge, Weales attacks Muggeridge's literary and social criticism as self-indulgently cynical.

Malcolm Muggeridge is presumably a selling name, an advertisable presence for any magazine which prints him. Yet, his name on a cover elicits in me an inevitable response, a mixture of distaste and boredom. When TV Guide proclaimed that Muggeridge, “a British wit,” was going to hold forth in its pages on “Is Anyone Really Listening?”, I muttered, “Not Muggeridge again,” and “Who cares what he thinks about television,” and tossed the magazine aside. When I finally got around to reading the article more than a month later, driven to it by duty not pleasure, I found that it was standard Muggeridge, a neatly written piece mixing personal reminiscence and doubtful generalization and coming to...