#malcolm muggeridge

[litandlifequotes]

In some mysterious way it became clear to him that there was no darkness, only the possibility of losing sight of a light that shone eternally.

Conversion: The Spiritual Journey of a Twentieth Century Pilgrim by Malcolm Muggeridge

[snatching-ishidates-wig]

Walter Duranty’s dispatch from Moscow of Friday, March 31, 1933

"In an age when the press served as the principal source of news, the best way to ensure that Soviet Russia received favorable coverage abroad was to accredit only those newspapers and journalists who gave evidence of a cooperative attitude. Since every major newspaper wanted a bureau in Moscow, most complied with the demand to assign there friendly correspondents. ...

Before cabling a dispatch, a correspondent had to secure approval of the Press Department of the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs. "One took them in," recalls the English correspondent and writer Malcolm Muggeridge, "to be censored, like taking an essay to one's tutor at Cambridge, watching anxiously as they were read for any frowns or hesitations, dreading to see a pencil picked to slash something out."

A Concise History of the Russian Revolution, by Richard Pipes

First composition of the Council of People's Commissars of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.

[soufleur]

"Se, por acaso, você eliminasse o sofrimento, o mundo seria um lugar terrível, pois tudo aquilo que corrige a tendência humana de se sentir importante demais, de se gabar em excesso, desapareceria. O homem já é mau o bastante agora, mas seria absolutamente intolerável se nunca sofresse."

Malcolm Muggeridge, citado em O sofrimento nunca é em vão, de Elizabeth Elliot, pág. 24

[oldshowbiz]

1969.

Malcolm Muggeridge claimedarts funding was "breeding barbarians at public expense" because swear words were suddenly permissible on the live stage.

[castyourline]

“We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature—trees, flowers, grass—grow in silence… The more we receive in silent prayer the more we can give in our active lives. We need silence to be able to touch souls. The essential thing is not what we say, but what God says to us and through us.”

— Teresa of Calcutta (quoted in Something Beautiful for God by Malcolm Muggeridge)

[sharpened--edges]

[T]here was something very loveable and sweet about [Orwell], and without any question, an element of authentic prophecy in his terrible vision of the future. His particular contribution to this sort of literature was his sense that a completely collectivised State would be produced not, as Wells had envisaged, in terms of scientific efficiency, not as Aldous Huxley had envisaged, in terms of a heartless but vivid eroticism, but to the accompaniment of all the dreary debris and shabbiness of the past […]

Malcolm Muggeridge, "In Muggeridge's Diaries" (selections from Like It Was), in Orwell Remembered, edited by Audrey Coppard and Bernard Crick (Ariel, 1984), pp. 269–70.

[thequietabsolute]

Once again the governing American passion to exclude the world — air, sound, light, food, sensuality. Everything is wrapped, packaged.

— Malcolm Muggeridge, 1962

[preacherman316]

Psalm 51

Malcolm Muggeridge (1903-1990) was a British born author, journalist, and media personality. Later in life he became an advocate for Christianity. He once related an occasion when on assignment in India of leaving his hotel for a swim in the nearby river. As he entered the water, he saw a woman across the river from nearby village who came for her bath. (more…) “”

[dorianroark]

I often pined for a total detachment from a society whose standards I despise and whose future prospects I regard as catastrophic, but in which I nonetheless have an inescapable stake.

If God is dead, somebody is going to have to take his place. It will be megalomania or erotomania, the drive for power or the drive for pleasure, the clenched fist or the phallus, Hitler or Hugh Hefner.

- Malcolm Muggeridge

[cadavidson]

Malcolm Muggeridge Quotes on God, Life

Malcolm Muggeridge Quotes on God, Life Thomas Malcolm Muggeridge (24 March 1903 – 14 November 1990) was an English journalist and satirist.    “God, stay with me, let no word cross my lips that is not your word, no thoughts enter my mind that are not your thoughts”. There is no such thing as darkness; only a failure to see. Malcolm Muggeridge People do not believe lies because they have to, but…

[artthatgivesmefeelings]

Rudolf Weyr (Austrian, 1847-1914) The power at sea, 1893 Michaelertrakt, Hofburg Palace Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream. - Malcolm Muggeridge

[yonderghostshistories]

My Thoughts on "Holy Flying Circus" (2011) + my fave moments from the film!

Just gotta say.....HFC was pretty great! It was funny and moving and crazy and I ABSOLUTELY ADORE IT!! 10000/10 imo, would recommend!

Any uhh here's my fave things/moments/quotes from HFC that I loved when watching it! :

(btw uhh spoilers for anyone who hasn't seen the film yet, to which you should... ya'know watch it....cuz it's kinda cool actually)

-Charles Edwards as Michael Palin

-The animation sequences are pretty cool, huge props and shout-out to the team for recreating the Gilliam-esque animated sequences!

-Tom Fisher as Graham Chapman was pretty much the MVP of this film, I love his surreal yet pretty funny wiseness that he gives the other Pythons and every scene he was in, even for a few minutes of screen time, was pretty much GOATED ASF!! Would've loved to have seen more scenes of Fisher's Graham Chapman, but for every moment he was in, he absolutely chewed, nay, MUNCHED on that scenery with absolutely deLIGHT!!

-Phil Nichol as Terry Gilliam was pretty hilarious actually ngl! Nichol's portrayal really nailed down Gilliam's crazy and chaotic little goblin-like vibes, and I absolutely love Nichol's voice he did for Gilliam, it's very adorable imo 🥰

-I like the scene in the movie where the Pythons are at the pub, and John, Michael, Terry, Jonesy & Eric are drinking alcohol/beer 🍻, whereas Gray's the only one drinking orange juice 🍊. Idk, it's a nice little detail I noticed and I appreciate it being included in the film as it refers to Gray's alcohol intervention and that's he's really over the alcohol for the better and for the good of his health. It's a nice and lovely moment ❤️

-Charles Edwards as Michael Palin

-"Anyone here who refuses to have the film receive the X certificate, say "Eric is a money-grabbing bastard!" " , "Eric is a money-grabbing bastard!"

-"Christians and homosexuals can't be in the same room together. We're their natural predators"

-Darren Boyd as John Cleese hitting that islamaphobe with a tree branch. Not only a Fawlty Towers reference, but also kinda based actually 😎👍 plus I agree with @commonguttersnipe regarding this moment in that it's really great that the film makes the important point in differentiating between free speech and hate speech.

-Charles Edwards as Michael Palin

-Charles Edwards as Michael Palin finally snapping and just straight up bitch-slapping Malcolm Muggeridge in the face with a water jug during the "Friday Night, Saturday Morning" debate, and John cheering him on. Even if it turned out it was just Michael's fantasy dream sequence, it was pretty cool and based actually 😎👍

-"I do..love you....Mike" 🥺

-Rufus Jones as Terry Jones as Michael's Wife/Jones the Wife is really pretty 😍, and I love her and Michael's relationship in the film, it's so wholesome 🥰🥰

-The "John Vs Michael" puppet Star Wars parody fight sequence. It was really funny and kinda cool!!

-Charles Edwards as Michael Palin's mum

-Charles Edwards as Michael Palin having an argument with Geoffrey McGivern's "Would you like to sign my petition?" Character, it was really funny imo! 🤣

-"Can I talk to you about Life of Brian?" "Well, what makes you want to talk about "Life of Brian"?" "Great and uhh-uhh What??" pretty hilarious moment there 😂

And finally:

-Charles Edwards as Michael Palin

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

"The only ultimate disaster that can befall us, I have come to realize, is to feel ourselves at home here on earth." – Malcolm Muggeridge

[maximumphilosopheranchor]

The basic facts of mass hunger and death, although sometimes reported in the European and American press, never took on the clarity of an undisputed event. Almost no one claimed that Stalin meant to starve Ukrainians to death; even Adolf Hitler preferred to blame the Marxist system. It was controversial to note that starvation was taking place at all. Gareth Jones did so in a handful of newspaper articles; it seems that he was the only one to do so in English under his own name. When Cardinal Theodor Innitzer of Vienna tried to appeal for food aid for the starving in summer and autumn 1933, Soviet authorities rebuffed him nastily, saying that the Soviet Union had neither cardinals nor cannibals – a statement that was only half true. Though the journalists knew less than the diplomats, most of them understood that millions were dying from hunger. The influential Moscow correspondent of the New York Times, Walter Duranty, did his best to undermine Jones’s accurate reporting. Duranty, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1932, called Jones’s account of the famine a “big scare story”. Duranty’s claim that there was “no actual starvation” but “only widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition” echoed Soviet usages and pushed euphemism into mendacity. This was an Orwellian distinction; and indeed George Orwell himself regarded the Ukrainian famine of 1933 as a central example of a black truth that artists of language had covered with bright colors. Duranty knew that millions of people had starved to death. Yet he maintained in his journalism that the hunger served a higher purpose. Duranty thought that “you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.” Aside from Jones, the only journalist to file serious reports in English was Malcolm Muggeridge, writing anonymously for the Manchester Guardian. He wrote that the famine was “one of the most monstrous crimes in history, so terrible that people in the future will scarcely be able to believe that it happened.” In fairness, even the people with the most obvious interest in events in Soviet Ukraine, the Ukrainians living beyond the border of the Soviet Union, needed months to understand the extent of the famine. Some five million Ukrainians lived in neighboring Poland, and their political leaders worked hard to draw international attention to the mass starvation in the Soviet Union. And yet even they grasped the extent of the tragedy only in May 1933, by which time most of the victims were already dead. Throughout the following summer and autumn, Ukrainian newspapers in Poland covered the famine, and Ukrainian politicians in Poland organized marches and protests. The leader of the Ukrainian feminist organization tried to organize an international boycott of Soviet goods by appealing to the women of the world. Several attempts were made to reach Franklin D. Roosevelt, the president of the United States. None of this made any difference. The laws of the international market ensured that the grain taken from Soviet Ukraine would feed others. Roosevelt, preoccupied above all by the position of the American worker during the Great Depression, wished to establish diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. The telegrams from Ukrainian activists reached him in autumn 1933, just as his personal initiative in US-Soviet relations was bearing fruit. The United States extended diplomatic recognition to the Soviet Union in November 1933.

Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin

[alphaman99]

“So the final conclusion would surely be that whereas other civilizations have been brought down by attacks of barbarians from without, ours had the unique distinction of training its own destroyers at its own educational institutions, and then providing them with facilities for propagating their destructive ideology far and wide, all at the public expense. Thus did Western Man decide to abolish himself, creating his own boredom out of his own affluence, his own vulnerability out of his own strength, his own impotence out of his own erotomania, himself blowing the trumpet that brought the walls of his own city tumbling down, and having convinced himself that he was too numerous, labored with pill and scalpel and syringe to make himself fewer. Until at last, having educated himself into imbecility, and polluted and drugged himself into stupefaction, he keeled over--a weary, battered old brontosaurus--and became extinct.”

― Malcolm Muggeridge

[culttvblog]

The Wednesday Play: Alice in Wonderland (1966)

Absolutely delighted to have got round to blogging about the version of Alice done for The Wednesday Play in 1966 by Jonathan Miller. It starred amongst others John Gielgud, Peter Cook, Leo McKern, Peter Sellers, Finlay Currie, Michael Redgrave, Wilfrid Brambell, Peter Eyre and Malcolm Muggeridge as the gryphon. The music was by Ravi Shankar (love his music by prefer the rather wilder stuff by his nephew Ananda, if you haven't come across him).

You read that right, MALCOLM MUGGERIDGE, anti communist, critic of the sexual revolution and populariser of Mother Theresa. I might as well just pack up and give this one up because blogging about this one is punching well above my weight. Especially when put up against Jonathan Miller. This is no lightweight play for children, these are seriously big guns involved in this romp through Wonderland.

It was broadcast in December 1966 after 9pm (ie for adults rather than children) and the controversy was loud and immediate. Miller's version of Alice has been denounced as all sort of things (the word travesty keeps appearing, for example) and the arguing about what's actually going on has continued in the succeeding sixty years. This gorgeous piece of excellent television is more hated and subject to denunciation than probably anything I've blogged about.

There are only two keys we need to understand this version of Alice. The first is that (as indicated by the broadcast time) it is not intended for children, but is instead *about* children and childhood, and is for adults. The second is that Miller has made the decision to strip the story of any magic or fantasy, and has instead made it about dreaming and depicted a normal child surrounded by adults who don't particularly have time for her and do strange nonsensical things. There is also a layer of criticism of Victorian society but that is of a part with the kind of adults who feature in this play.

Miller was very clear that this was the intention, which is why everyone has spent the succeeding decades attempting to interpret it in pretty much every other way possible. I kept reading about Freud when reading up for this post, and there is simply no Freud here at all. There is no psychoanlysis, there's merely a girl and a bunch of adults.

Another thing which is wildly treated as is Miller is beheading rabbits on camera instead of merely making a production decision, is that the entire cast are dressed in normal Victorian clothes and the ones who are animals are not in animal costume. A real cat is used for the Cheshire cat. He gave his reason for this that if you've got great actors there's absolutely no point obscuring their faces - but it also stresses the realism by reinforcing that this interpretation is about an ordinary girl surrounded by ordinary adults.

Further levels of magic are taken out by an absence of extraordinary effects, although it is very clearly given a dreamy quality. I love this version: I actually like it best of the versions of Alice I've seen, and I think it's the unpretentious quality of the production which gives it this charm.

Anne-Marie Mallik, the child actress who played Alice, is another bone of contention. A lot of people think she comes across too flat and matter of fact, but of course that is the reason Miller chose her. Interestingly this is her only credit as an actress, she went into banking after leaving school.

The play is filmed mainly on location in a former military hospital and with wonderful country scenes. The fact that it is black and white makes it absolutely perfect, in my opinion. Ravi Shankar's score gives it a heady sixties ambience, suggesting that we're going to go off on the hippy trail to Afghanistan. But there I go, allowing myself to see things that aren't there instead of the unvarnished, flat story of a girl.

I think probably the reason this version of Alice has been so controversial is actually this rather dead-pan quality about it. If you are not actively filling people's attention with stuff, they tend to project things, and that is why so much of the criticism either misses the stated point of this production completely or sees things going on in it which weren't intended at all. The public just can't cope with an Alice where the cat is a cat and Alice is a girl.

And this is I think my own criticism of this play: it's too intelligent. Miller, like a lot of intelligent people, may have had difficulty realising that hoi polloi wouldn't be able to cope with an approach which made perfect sense to him, or even understand it. Although I love the production, I personally disagree with his interpretation of the story here, and while it's hugely successful there are some problems with the approach. An example would be the bit where Alice refers to the baby turning into a pig. The more fantastic elements of the story like this one contradict the premise that the story is about childhood and about Alice and the adults. If a real girl actually says that a baby has turned into a pig, you have to start explaining why. For it to be a dream would certainly fit within the interpretation of this version, but the problem is that there is too much stuff that has to be explained like this, you simply can't approach Alice in Wonderland as a straightforward story without accounting for the unreal things. On the other hand if you take out all the stranger things in Alice in Wonderland basically she falls asleep and wakes up again, so it's difficult to reconcile here. However I don't want you to think that I am suggesting that this problem with the approach is in any way a terminal criticism, it just requires the viewer not to scratch it too deeply. It's almost as if this one is best understood by not trying to understand it too much, and that is what I love best about it.

I have one other criticism which is more substantial, in my opinion. Apart from Shankar's music there are places where the soundtrack is a hymn tune. This is the only thing about this version which I think is completely wrong, because it seems to introduce the subject of religion into a story where it's out of place. It would have been better to use music fitting the theme of criticising Victorian society, and probably I think something suitable could have been found in Gilbert and Sullivan. Or more Ravi Shankar. Come on, while he's got the sitar out you might as well get more of him.

Highly recommended, but then you knew I was going to say that, didn't you.

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