born March 24, 1903, Croydon, Surrey, Eng.
died Nov. 24, 1990, Hastings, East Sussex
British journalist and social critic.
A lecturer in Cairo in the late 1920s, he worked for newspapers in the 1930s before serving in British intelligence during World War II. He then resumed his journalistic career, including a stint as editor of Punch (195357). An outspoken and controversial iconoclast, he targeted liberalism and other aspects of contemporary life with his stinging wit and elegant prose. He was early an avowed atheist but moved gradually to embrace Roman Catholicism at age 79. He wrote some 30 books, including satiric novels and religious accounts, and from the 1950s was a popular interviewer, panelist, and documentarian on British television.