Posted by John Wilson on July 16, 2010 at 15:59:41 user hugo.
In Reply to: Re: Ransome and Muggeridge posted by andyb on July 13, 2010 at 00:02:12:
Muggeridge’s autobiography (Chronicles of Wasted Time) volume 2 (The Infernal Grove) does not refer to AR, but in volume 1 (The Green Stick) he refers to Ransome’s advice to change his name after his play “Three Flats” was produced in 1931. And the Egypt episode when AR recommended him to the Guardian; MM wrote that AR was the epitome of all Manchester Guardian writers: “amateurish, literary, opinionated, conceited, eccentric” and with a tie of the sort favoured by middle-brow aesthetes”. Wolfe’s 1995 biography of MM refers to MM’s 1934 novel “Picture Palace”; as Brogan says it was libellious eg of Kingsley Martin (ex-Guardian, replaced by MM?) of the New Statesman. But Wolfe says that the greatest threat to the novel came from the Manchester Guardian itself. Picture Palace was published by Eyre & Spottiswood then withdrawn; but the first publisher Putnam turned it down as AR was horrified by it and did not recommend it to Putnam.
Ransome and the linguist Harold Williams (who had been a father-figure to him) fell out over the Russian Revolution(s); his wife Ariadna was a supporter of the Cadets: