There's a large strain of irony in our human affairs... Interwoven with our affairs is this wonderful spirit of irony which prevents us from ever being utterly and irretrievably serious, from being unaware of the mysterious nature of our existence.

Having come into conflict with the paper's editorial policy Muggeridge turned back to novel writing starting Winter in Moscow (1934) describing conditions in the "socialist utopia" and satirising Western journalists' uncritical view of Joseph Stalin's regime. The first volume (1972) was The Green Stick. S.

He is credited with popularising Mother Teresa and in his later years became a Catholic and moral campaigner. During World War II he was a soldier and a spy. Thomas Malcolm Muggeridge (24 March 1903 – 14 November 1990) was an English journalist author media personality and satirist.