By E. Graydon Carter

For the better part of this century, Malcolm Muggeridge, 79, the great gadfly of British letters, has unleashed his rapier prose on much that civilized man has too foolishly held dear, including, from time to time, organized religion. Late last month, however, the durable old iconoclast, who had been raised a Methodist, marched his fervent bundle of contradictions down to a tiny white chapel in Hurst Green, Sussex, and with his wife became a member of the Roman Catholic Church. Once a hearty drinker and womanizer, Muggeridge somewhat stunned his readers in 1969 with the admission that he had become a practicing Christian. But in his later years, he has longed for a final truth. His decision to convert was inspired in part by the saintly example of Mother Teresa. Finally, he said, there was "a sense of homecoming, of picking up the threads of a lost life, of responding to a bell that has long been ringing, of finding a place at a table that has long been left vacant." After the ceremony, Muggeridge stepped out into the brisk English autumn air, and for once seemed content with all he surveyed. "It's a particularly joyful sort of day," said he. "It's rather Like when you fall in love with a woman and ask her to marry you. You know there are no more questions to be asked."

The real-life Queen and Knave of Hearts (Taylor and Burton) have been plotting a return to Broadway in Noel Coward's Private Lives. Meanwhile, Richard's daughter Kate Burton (by his first wife Sybil) has finished her Coward duties with George C. Scott in Present Laughter, and is moving on to Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland. The Broadway show is set to open on Dec. 23, commemorating the 150th anniversary of Carroll's birth and the 50th anniversary of Actress Eva Le Gallienne's original stage presentation. Inspired by the illustrations of Sir John Tenniel, Alice is again being produced by Le Gallienne, 83, who makes a flying appearance as the White Queen. After the relentless rehearsals, Burton, 25, observes, "my head is so full. It's been so hard that my head is sort of mush." Very Alice-like indeed.

Fifteen years after her first starring role in a fur bikini in One Million Years B.C., Raquel Welch, 42, is writing a book. And in the tradition of Jane Fonda and Miss Piggy, it will be an exercise-beauty-tip plan for which she has already received a $275,000 advance from New American Library. Welch, who has been warming up for her task by practicing on a new $10,000 word processor, says that unlike other get-fit-quick books, hers will emphasize that "the mind and the body are connected." She hasn't actually started writing "the book" yet, but between appearances on Broadway in Woman of the Year, the actress has taken that first step in celebrity authorhood: talking into a tape recorder.

The heroic portraits of Adolf Hitler that decorated German government offices during the Nazi regime were mainly slavish copies of those done by Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler's official photographer. Last week, 37 years after the German leader's death, the only known candid live portrait of the Fuhrer, carefully hidden from the Gestapo by the worried artist Klaus Richter, went on display at the Berlin Museum for the first time. Richter caught Hitler in profile almost by accident in 1941, while making sketches for a commissioned portrait of Luftwaffe Chief Hermann Goring. The German leader suddenly appeared with Benito Mussolini, and while Hitler ranted about "the final solution," Richter sketched feverishly, then finished the work later in his studio. The artist died in 1948, and it was only recently that his estate came to an agreement with the Berlin Museum. The wait has not diminished the painting's unsettling impact. Says Museum Director Rolf Bothe: "The artist tried to show a man who provokes fear, and he succeeded. Seeing this picture, I am afraid." Merely for having painted it, so was the artist.

-- By E. Graydon Carter

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