This admiring, authorized biography of Muggeridge—a British journalist and gadfly turned crusading Christian—substitutes chumminess for understanding. Muggeridge's endless career changes and his flip-flopping attitudes on politics and religion have confused his friends, critics, enemies, and now, it seems, his biographer. Although Ingrams had complete access to Muggeridge's estate, he merely skims the life, making minimal use of his subject's personal papers to analyze the man's complicated interior life. Muggeridge's childhood of suburban socialism and his Cambridge education detoured in 1924 to a teaching position in India, whose independence he supported. After his stint as the left-wing Manchester Guardian's ``man in Moscow'' and his marriage into the socialist Webb family, he developed an intense, unfashionable anti-Soviet streak. Muggeridge found himself in intelligence during WW II and, in spite of inveterate womanizing and boozing, still achieved more than his colleague Graham Greene. In the postwar era, Muggeridge hit his mercurial stride, and Ingrams has his easiest time. He effortlessly recounts how Muggeridge solidified his reputation as a controversial personality by means of his Punch lampoon of Winston Churchill; his criticism of the BBC's cult of the monarchy while under contract as an interviewer; and his protest against Krushchev's visit to England. Muggeridge's career in television reached its apogee with a documentary on then-unknown Mother Teresa, which also turned him toward evangelical Christianity after a life of agnostic ambivalence, adultery, and general sensuality. Although Ingrams unearths a previous religious interest at Cambridge, his superficial treatment of Muggeridge's twilight conversion is the book's weakest point. With his breezy, clubbish Fleet Street style and muted ``authorized'' tone, Igrams relies on his subject's notoriety for drama, for the most part glossing over any sign of a complex inner man. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-06-251364-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1995
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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