Muggeridge collection donated
LONDON, ON–A collection of books and archives focusing on the works of noted British journalist and author Malcolm Muggeridge has been donated to the King’s College Cardinal Carter Library at the University of Western Ontario.
The Ian A. Hunter Malcolm Muggeridge Collection was formally donated December 7. Muggeridge, who died in 1990, was Distinguished Visitor at the University of Western Ontario School of Journalism in 1978-79. King’s College is a Roman Catholic liberal arts college affiliated with the UWO.
Professor emeritus from the UWO’s Faculty of Law, Hunter was a long-time friend and biographer of Muggeridge. The donation coincided with the publication of The Very Best of Malcolm Muggeridge (Hodder & Stoughton), edited by Hunter.
The collection of some 300 books and archival material includes complete holdings of the works of Muggeridge and his closest literary collaborators and friends, Hugh Kingsmill and Hesketh Pearson. Many items are signed first editions. Works by William Gerhardie and Graham Greene are also included.
Archival material includes a variety of correspondence, manuscripts and miscellaneous papers. Much of it relates to the International Commission of Jurists Inquiry into the Famine in Ukraine, 1932-33. It was Muggeridge who, as correspondent for the Manchester Guardian in Moscow in 1933, first broke the story of the Ukrainian famine, and later testified in England to the resultant death and devastation.
Hunter was general counsel to the commission, which held hearings in Europe, England and the United States from 1988 to 1990.
King’s College librarian John S. Clouston says in view of Muggeridge’s conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1982, his growing concern with moral and ethical issues, and his ties to the London academic community, the Cardinal Carter Library is an appropriate home for the collection. Muggeridge had few rivals as a chronicler of his age, says Clouston, and the collection "reflects his complex, prophetic legacy to Western culture and modern Christianity."
