Malcolm Muggeridge - Post-war Period

Post-war Period

Muggeridge worked on other newspapers, including the Calcutta Statesman, Evening Standard, and Daily Telegraph. He was editor of Punch magazine from 1953 to 1957, a challenging appointment for one who claimed to have no sense of humour. One of his first acts was to sack the illustrator E. H. Shepherd. In 1957 he received public and professional opprobrium for criticism of the British monarchy in a U.S. magazine, The Saturday Evening Post. Given the title "Does England Really Need a Queen?", its publication was delayed by five months to coincide with the Royal State Visit to Washington, D.C. taking place later in the year. While the article was little more than a rehash of views expressed in a 1955 article "Royal Soap Opera", its timing caused outrage back in Britain, and he was sacked for a short period from the BBC, and a contract with Beaverbrook newspapers was cancelled. His notoriety propelled him into becoming a better-known broadcaster with a reputation as a tough interviewer.

By the 1960s, his spiritual beliefs began to become more significant in his professional career. He became a figure of some ridicule and satire as he took to frequently denouncing the new sexual laxity of the swinging sixties on radio and television. He particularly railed against "Pills and Pot" – birth control pills and cannabis. He was contemptuous of fellow countrymen the Beatles. In a 1968 article in Esquire magazine, he called them "four vacant youths... dummy figures with tousled heads (and) no talent."

His 1966 book Tread softly for you tread on my jokes was published during this time and, though acerbic in its wit, revealed a serious view of life. The title is an allusion to the last line of the poem He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven by William Butler Yeats – "Tread softly because you tread on my dreams." In 1967, he preached at Great St Mary's, Cambridge, and again in 1970.

Having been elected rector of Edinburgh University, Muggeridge was goaded by the editor of The Student, Anna Coote, to support the call for contraceptive pills to be available at the University Health Centre. He used a sermon at St. Giles' Cathedral in January 1968, to resign the post in protest against the Student Representative Council's views on "pot and pills." This sermon was published under the title "Another King."

Muggeridge was also known for his wit and profound writings, often at odds with the prevailing opinions of the day: "Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream", he liked to quote. He wrote two volumes of an autobiography called Chronicles of Wasted Time (the title is a quotation from Shakespeare's sonnet 106). The first volume (1972) was The Green Stick. The second volume (1973) was The Infernal Grove. A projected third volume The Right Eye covering the post-war period was never completed.