Look back in angst
Sir : When I saw on your cover that Mr Mug- geridge was to review the work of his disciple, Mr Christopher Booker, I silently resolved to skip that particular page. But such is the appeal of his writings (like watching an old film whose very badness brings tears of laughter), in due course I reached and read his piece.
I shouldn't have bothered. For back they came, marching out of that Biblical dark, those same grim-faced prophets and priests, armed with their scourges, sackcloth aplenty draped over their shoulders, ash spilling from their matted heads, voices, raised and crying `Woe! Woe!' and 'Repent You Sinners!' And, somewhere behind, a personal God wringing His hands over His own creation, accompanied by a sometime gentle Christ pleading for agnostics like myself to die in my fantasy self and live in my real self.
And, by Muggeridge and by Booker, it could happen. And what a prospect !
For what Mr Muggeridge and Mr Booker demand is, like all forceful, opinionated men —particularly those of a recent conversion to some spiritual ethos which looks askance on the things of the flesh—is that we die to their fantasies and rise to their realities.
From which stupendous arrogance may the blessed diversity of man preserve us.
Christopher Leach Saint Cross, Waydown Road, Haslemere, Surrey
Sir : Malcolm Muggeridge's review of Chris- topher Booker's The Neophiliacs (18 Octo- ber) concludes with Booker's words `ulti- mately to overcome his fantasy self is the one supreme contribution a man can make to mankind'. In other words as Muggeridge says 'Thy will be done'. As someone else has said 'If it's new it's not true ; if it's true it's not new'. For will read ego, and the crucifixion of the ego is advocated by most religious thinkers. It is, however, the uncrucified egos of the vast majority, Muggeridge's no less than mine, which keep the human debate going and produce the SPECTATOR each week.
Thomas Spiers 7 Harmsworth Street, Kennington Park, London sE17
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