Biographical Sketch: Christopher Hitchens

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Christopher Hitchens

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Christopher Hitchens

Hitchens in 2007
Born Christopher Eric Hitchens
13 April 1949 (1949-04-13) (age 61)
Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, UK
Occupation Writer and pundit
Nationality British (until 2007)
American/British
Alma mater Balliol College, Oxford
Genres Polemicism, journalism, essays, biography, literary criticism
Spouse(s) Carol Blue (1989–present)

Eleni Meleagrou (1981–1989)
Children Alexander, Sophia, Antonia
Relative(s) Peter Hitchens (brother)
Influences[hide]

George Orwell, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, Joseph Heller, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, Salman Rushdie, Vladimir Nabokov, Richard Llewellyn, Aldous Huxley, PG Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh, Paul Mark Scott, James Fenton, James Joyce, Albert Camus, Oscar Wilde, Conor Cruise O’Brien, Martin Amis, Kingsley Amis, Ian McEwan, Leon Trotsky, Colm Tóibín, Bertrand Russell, Wilfred Owen, Isaiah Berlin [1]

Christopher Eric Hitchens (born 13 April 1949) is an English-American author and journalist whose books, essays, and journalistic career span more than four decades. He has been a columnist and literary critic at The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Slate, World Affairs, The Nation, Free Inquiry, and became a media fellow at the Hoover Institution in September 2008.[2] He is a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits and in 2005 he was voted the world’s fifth top public intellectual in a Prospect/Foreign Policy poll.[3][4]

Hitchens is known for his admiration of George Orwell, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson and for his excoriating critiques of, among others, Mother Teresa,[5] Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Henry Kissinger. His confrontational style of debate has made him both a lauded and controversial figure. As a political observer, polemicist and self-defined radical, he rose to prominence as a fixture of the left-wing publications in his native Britain and in the United States. His departure from the established political left began in 1989 after what he called the “tepid reaction” of the European left following Ayatollah Khomeini‘s issue of a fatwā calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie. The September 11, 2001 attacks strengthened his internationalist embrace of an interventionist foreign policy, and his vociferous criticism of what he called “fascism with an Islamic face.” His numerous editorials in support of the Iraq War caused some to label him a neoconservative, while Hitchens insists he is not “a conservative of any kind.”[6]

Identified as a champion of the “new atheism” movement, Hitchens describes himself as an anti-theist and believer in the philosophical values of the Enlightenment. Hitchens says that a person “could be an atheist and wish that belief in god were correct,” but that “An antitheist, a term I’m trying to get into circulation, is someone who is relieved that there’s no evidence for such an assertion.”[7] He argues that the concept of God or a supreme being is a totalitarian belief that destroys individual freedom, and that free expression and scientific discovery should replace religion as a means of teaching ethics and defining human civilization. He wrote at length on atheism and the nature of religion in his 2007 book God Is Not Great.

Though Hitchens retained his British citizenship, he became a United States citizen on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial, on 13 April 2007, his 58th birthday.[8] His latest book, Hitch-22: A Memoir, was published in June 2010.[9] Touring for the book was cut short later the same month so that he could begin treatment for newly diagnosed esophageal cancer.[10]

[edit] Life and career

[edit] Early life

His mother Yvonne and father Eric (1909–1987) met in Scotland while both serving in the Royal Navy during World War II, Yvonne as a “Wren” (a member of the Women’s Royal Naval Service),[11] and Eric as an imperialistic, “purse-lipped and silent” Commander, whose ship had sunk Nazi Germany’s Scharnhorst in the Battle of North Cape.[1] His father’s Naval career required the family to move and reside in bases throughout the United Kingdom and its dependencies, including in Malta, where his brother Peter was born in Sliema in 1951.

Because Yvonne argued that “if there is going to be an upper class in this country, then Christopher is going to be in it,”[12] he was educated at the independent Leys School, in Cambridge, and then later at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was tutored by Steven Lukes, and read philosophy, politics, and economics. Hitchens was “bowled over” in his adolescence by Richard Llewellyn‘s How Green Was My Valley, Arthur Koestler‘s Darkness at Noon, Fyodor Dostoyevsky‘s Crime and Punishment, R. H. Tawney‘s critique on Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, and the works of George Orwell.[11] In 1968 he took part in the TV quiz show University Challenge.[13] Hitchens has written of his homosexual experiences when in boarding school in his memoir, Hitch-22.[14] These experiences spilled over into his college years when he allegedly had relationships with two men who eventually became a part of Margaret Thatcher‘s government.[15]

In the 1960s, Hitchens joined the political left, drawn by his anger over the Vietnam war, nuclear weapons, racism, and “oligarchy“, including that of “the unaccountable corporation“. He would express affinity to the politically charged countercultural and protest movements of the 1960s and 70s. However, he deplored the rife recreational drug use of the time, which he describes as hedonistic.[16]

He joined the Labour Party in 1965, but was expelled in 1967 along with the majority of the Labour students’ organization, because of what Hitchens called “Prime Minister Harold Wilson‘s contemptible support for the war in Vietnam”.[17][clarification needed] Under the influence of Peter Sedgwick, translator of Russian revolutionary and Soviet dissident Victor Serge, Hitchens forged an ideological interest in Trotskyist and anti-Stalinist socialism.[11] Shortly thereafter, he joined “a small but growing post-Trotskyite Luxemburgist sect”.[18] Throughout his student days, he was on many occasions arrested and assaulted in the various political protests and activities in which he participated.

He then became a correspondent for the magazine International Socialism,[19] which was published by the International Socialists, the forerunners of today’s British Socialist Workers Party. This group was broadly Trotskyist, but differed from more orthodox Trotskyist groups in its refusal to defend communist states as “workers’ states“. This was symbolized in their slogan “Neither Washington nor Moscow but International Socialism“.

[edit] Journalistic career (1970–1981)

Hitchens left Oxford with a third class degree.[20] His first job was with the London Times Higher Education Supplement, where he served as social science editor. Hitchens admits that he hated the job and was later fired, recalling that “I sometimes think if I’d been any good at that job, I might still be doing it.”[citation needed] In the 1970s, he went on to work for the New Statesman, where he became friends with, among others, Martin Amis and Ian McEwan. At the New Statesman, he acquired a reputation as a fierce left-winger, aggressively attacking targets such as Henry Kissinger, the Vietnam War, and the Roman Catholic Church.

In November 1973, Hitchens’ mother committed suicide in Athens in a suicide pact with her lover, a former clergyman named Timothy Bryan,[11] in what was initially thought to be a murder scene, after overdosing on sleeping pills in adjoining hotel rooms with Bryan slashing his wrists in the bath to be sure. Hitchens flew alone to Athens to recover her remains. While there he reported on the Greek constitutional crisis of the military junta that was happening at the time. It became his first leading article for the New Statesman. Hitchens stated his belief that his mother was pressured into taking her own life under the fear of his father becoming aware of her infidelity, in an already strained and unhappy marriage, and with both her children now independent adults.[21]

[edit] American career (1981–present)

After immigrating to the United States in 1981, Hitchens wrote for The Nation where he penned vociferous critiques of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and American foreign policy in South and Central America.[22][23][24][25][26][27][28] He became a Contributing Editor of Vanity Fair in 1992,[29] writing ten columns a year. He left The Nation in 2002, after profoundly disagreeing with other contributors over the Iraq War. There is speculation that Hitchens was the inspiration for Tom Wolfe‘s character Peter Fallow, in the 1987 novel The Bonfire of the Vanities,[24] but others — including Hitchens — believe it to be Spy Magazine‘s “Ironman Nightlife Decathlete” Anthony Haden-Guest.[30][31]

Hitchens spent part of his early career in journalism as a foreign correspondent in Cyprus.[32] Through his work there he met his first wife Eleni Meleagrou, a Greek Cypriot, with whom he has two children, Alexander and Sophia. His son, Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, born in 1984, has worked as a researcher for London think tanks the Policy Exchange and the Centre for Social Cohesion. Hitchens has continued writing essay-style correspondence pieces from a variety of locales, including Chad, Uganda[33] and the Darfur region of Sudan.[34] He has visited all three countries in the so-called “Axis of Evil“: Iraq, Iran and North Korea. His work has taken him to over 60 countries.[35]

In 1989 he met Carol Blue, a Californian writer, whom he later married, and with whom he had a daughter, Antonia. In 1991 he received a Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction.[36]

Prior to Hitchens’s political shift, the American author and polemicist Gore Vidal was apt to speak of Hitchens as his “Dauphin” or “heir”.[37][38][39] In 2010 Hitchens attacked Vidal in a Vanity Fair piece headlined “Vidal Loco,” calling him a “crackpot” for his adoption of 9/11 conspiracy theories.[40][41] Also, on the back of his book Hitch-22, among the praise from notable writers and figures, a Vidal quote endorsing Hitchens as his successor is crossed out with a red ‘X’ and a message saying “NO C.H.”

His strong advocacy of the war in Iraq had gained Hitchens a wider readership, and in September 2005, he was named one of the “Top 100 Public Intellectuals“[42] by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines. An online poll ranked the 100 intellectuals, but the magazines noted that the rankings of Hitchens (5), Noam Chomsky (1), and Abdolkarim Soroush (15) were partly due to supporters publicising the vote.[43]

In 2007, Hitchens’s work for Vanity Fair won him the National Magazine Award in the category “Columns and Commentary”.[44] He was a finalist once more in the same category in 2008 for some of his columns in Slate, but lost out to Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone.[45]

[edit] Views

[edit] Literature

Hitchens writes a monthly essay on books in the Atlantic Monthly[46] and contributes occasionally to other literary journals. One of his books, Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere, is a collection of such works, and Love, Poverty and War contains a section devoted to literary essays. In Why Orwell Matters, he defends Orwell’s writings against modern critics as relevant today and progressive for his time. In the 2008 book Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left, many literary critiques are included of essays and other books of writers, such as David Horowitz and Edward Said.

During a three-hour interview by Book TV,[1] he named authors who have had influence on his views.

This section requires expansion.

[edit] Politics

Main article: Christopher Hitchens’s political views

Hitchens became a socialist “largely [as] the outcome of a study of history, taking sides … in the battles over industrialism and war and empire.” In 2001, he told Rhys Southan of Reason magazine that he could no longer say “I am a socialist.” Socialists, he claimed, had ceased to offer a positive alternative to the capitalist system. Capitalism had become the more revolutionary economic system, and he welcomed globalisation as “innovative and internationalist.” He suggested that he had returned to his early, pre-socialist libertarianism, having come to attach great value to the freedom of the individual from the state and moral authoritarians. The San Francisco Chronicle referred to Hitchens as a “gadfly with gusto”.[47] In 2009 Hitchens was listed by Forbes magazine as one of the “25 most influential liberals in the U.S. media”.[48] However, the same article noted that he would “likely be aghast to find himself on this list”, since it reduces his self-styled radicalism to mere liberalism.

In 2006 in a town hall meeting in Pennsylvania debating the Jewish Tradition with Martin Amis, Hitchens commented on his political philosophy by stating “I am no longer a socialist, but I still am a Marxist“.[49] In 2009, in an article for The Atlantic entitled “The Revenge of Karl Marx“, Hitchens frames the late-2000s recession in terms of Marx’s economic analysis and notes how much Marx admired the capitalist system he was calling for the end of, but says that Marx ultimately failed to grasp how revolutionary capitalist innovation was.[50] Hitchens was an admirer of Argentine revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara, commenting that “[Che's] death meant a lot to me and countless like me at the time, he was a role model, albeit an impossible one for us bourgeois romantics insofar as he went and did what revolutionaries were meant to do — fought and died for his beliefs.”[51] In a 1997 essay, however, he distanced himself somewhat from some of Che’s actions.[52]

He continues to regard both Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky as great men,[53][54] and the October Revolution as a necessary event in the modernization of Russia.[18][24] In 2005, Hitchens praised Lenin’s creation of “secular Russia” and his destruction of the Russian Orthodox Church, describing it as “an absolute warren of backwardness and evil and superstition”.[18] In an interview with Radar in 2007, Hitchens said that if the Christian right‘s agenda were implemented in the United States “It wouldn’t last very long and would, I hope, lead to civil war, which they will lose, but for which it would be a great pleasure to take part.”[55]

The years after the fatwa issued against Salman Rushdie also saw Hitchens looking for allies and friends. In the United States he became increasingly critical of what he called “excuse making” on the left. At the same time, he was attracted to the foreign policy ideas of some on the Republican right that promoted pro-liberalism intervention, especially the neoconservative group that included Paul Wolfowitz.[56] Around this time, he befriended the Iraqi dissident and businessman Ahmed Chalabi.[57] In 2004, Hitchens stated that neoconservative support for US intervention in Iraq convinced him that he was “on the same side as the neo-conservatives” when it came to contemporary foreign policy issues.[58] He has also been known to refer to his association with “temporary neocon allies”.[59]

Hitchens speaking at a September 2000 third party protest at the headquarters of the Commission on Presidential Debates

Hitchens would elaborate on his political views and ideological shift in a discussion with Eric Alterman on Bloggingheads.tv. In this discussion Hitchens revealed himself as a supporter of Ralph Nader in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, who was disenchanted with the candidacy of both George W. Bush and Al Gore.[60] Prior to September 11, 2001, and the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, Hitchens was highly critical of Bush’s “non-interventionist” foreign policy. He has also criticized Bush’s support of intelligent design[61] and capital punishment.[62][62]

Following the September 11 attacks, Hitchens and Noam Chomsky debated the nature of radical Islam and of the proper response to it. In October 2001, Hitchens wrote criticisms of Chomsky in The Nation.[63][64] Chomsky responded[65] and Hitchens issued a rebuttal to Chomsky[66] to which Chomsky again responded.[67] Approximately a year after the 11 September attacks and his exchanges with Chomsky, Hitchens left The Nation, claiming that its editors, readers and contributors considered John Ashcroft a bigger threat than Osama bin Laden,[68] and were making excuses on behalf of Islamist terrorism; in the following months he wrote articles increasingly at odds with his colleagues. This highly charged exchange of letters involved Katha Pollitt and Alexander Cockburn, as well as Hitchens and Chomsky.

Hitchens made a brief return to The Nation just before the 2004 U.S. presidential election and wrote that he was “slightly” for Bush; shortly afterwards, Slate polled its staff on their positions on the candidates and mistakenly printed Hitchens’ vote as pro-John Kerry. Hitchens shifted his opinion to “neutral”, saying: “It’s absurd for liberals to talk as if Kristallnacht is impending with Bush, and it’s unwise and indecent for Republicans to equate Kerry with capitulation. There’s no one to whom he can surrender, is there? I think that the nature of the jihadist enemy will decide things in the end”.[69]

Although Hitchens defends Bush’s post-September 11 foreign policy, he has criticized the actions and alleged killings of Iraqis by U.S. troops in Abu Ghraib and Haditha, and the U.S. government’s use of waterboarding, which he unhesitatingly deemed as torture after being invited by Vanity Fair to voluntarily undergo it.[70][71] In January 2006, Hitchens joined with four other individuals and four organizations, including the ACLU and Greenpeace, as plaintiffs in a lawsuit, ACLU v. NSA, challenging Bush’s warrantless domestic spying program; the lawsuit was filed by the ACLU.[72][73][74] In February 2006, Hitchens helped organize a pro-Denmark rally outside the Danish Embassy in Washington, DC in response to the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy.[75]

In the 2008 presidential election, Hitchens in an article for Slate would state, “I used to call myself a single-issue voter on the essential question of defending civilization against its terrorist enemies and their totalitarian protectors, and on that “issue” I hope I can continue to expose and oppose any ambiguity.” He was critical of both main party candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain. Hitchens would go on to support Obama, calling McCain “senile“, and his choice of running mate Sarah Palin “absurd”, calling Palin a “pathological liar” and a “national disgrace”.[76]

Hitchens has described Zionism as being based on “the initial demagogic lie (actually two lies) that a land without a people needs a people without a land“, and he went even further saying “Zionism is a form of Bourgeoisie Nationalism” when debating the Jewish Tradition with Martin Amis at a Town hall function in Pennsylvania.[77] Hitchens supports Israel‘s right to exist, but has argued against what he calls Israel’s “expansionism” in the West Bank and Gaza and “internal clerical and chauvinist forces which want to instate a theocracy for Jews”.[78] Hitchens would collaborate on this issue with Edward Said, in 1988 publishing Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question.

Hitchens actively supports drug policy reform and has called for the abolition of the “war on drugs” which he described as an “authoritarian war” during a debate with William F. Buckley.[16] He has supported the legalization of cannabis for both medical and recreational purposes, citing it as a cure for glaucoma and as treatment for numerous side-effects induced by chemotherapy, including severe nausea, describing the prohibition of the drug as “sadistic”.[79] On the issue of abortion, Hitchens prioritizes in affirming that he believes a fetus should be regarded as an “unborn child”, but opposes the overturning of Roe v. Wade and supports the development of medical abortion techniques, and fundamentally believes in access to contraceptives and reproductive rights in order to prevent surgical abortion altogether.[80]

Other issues Hitchens has written on include his support for the reunification of Ireland,[81][82] abolition of the British monarchy,[83] and his condemnation of the war crimes of Slobodan Milošević[84] and Franjo Tuđman[85] in Yugoslavia, and the Bosnian War.[86]

[edit] Specific individuals

Main article: Christopher Hitchens’ critiques of public figures

Over the years, Hitchens has become famous for his scathing critiques of public figures. Three figures — Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, and Mother Teresa — were the targets of three separate full length texts, No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton, The Trial of Henry Kissinger, and The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice. Hitchens has also written book-length biographical essays about Thomas Jefferson (Thomas Jefferson: Author of America), George Orwell (Why Orwell Matters) and Thomas Paine (Thomas Paine’s “Rights of Man”: A Biography).

However, the majority of Hitchens’s critiques take the form of short opinion pieces, some of the more notable being his critiques of: Jerry Falwell,[87] George Galloway,[88] Mel Gibson,[89] Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama,[90] Michael Moore,[91] Daniel Pipes,[92] Ronald Reagan,[93] Jesse Helms,[94] and Cindy Sheehan.[18][95][96][97][98][99][100]

[edit] Religion

See also: God Is Not Great

Hitchens and John Lennox at the “Is God Great?” debate in Alabama

Hitchens often speaks out against the Abrahamic religions, or what he calls “the three great monotheisms” (Judaism, Christianity and Islam). He said: “The real axis of evil is Christianity, Judaism, and Islam”. In his book, God Is Not Great, Hitchens expanded his criticism to include all religions, including those rarely criticized by Western secularists such as Hinduism and neo-paganism. His book had mixed reactions, from praise in The New York Times for his “logical flourishes and conundrums”[101] to accusations of “intellectual and moral shabbiness” in the The Financial Times.[102] God Is Not Great was nominated for a National Book Award on 10 October 2007.[103][104]

Hitchens contends that organized religion is “the main source of hatred in the world”,[105] “[v]iolent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism, and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children”, and that accordingly it “ought to have a great deal on its conscience”. In God Is Not Great, Hitchens contends that;

“above all, we are in need of a renewed Enlightenment, which will base itself on the proposition that the proper study of mankind is man and woman [referencing Alexander Pope]. This Enlightenment will not need to depend, like its predecessors, on the heroic breakthroughs of a few gifted and exceptionally courageous people. It is within the compass of the average person. The study of literature and poetry, both for its own sake and for the eternal ethical questions with which it deals, can now easily depose the scrutiny of sacred texts that have been found to be corrupt and confected. The pursuit of unfettered scientific inquiry, and the availability of new findings to masses of people by electronic means, will revolutionize our concepts of research and development. Very importantly, the divorce between the sexual life and fear, and the sexual life and disease, and the sexual life and tyranny, can now at last be attempted, on the sole condition that we banish all religions from the discourse. And all this and more is, for the first time in our history, within the reach if not the grasp of everyone”.[106]

His book made him one of the four major advocates of the “new atheism“, and an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society,[107] Hitchens said he would accept an invitation from any religious leader who wished to debate with him. He also serves on the advisory board of the Secular Coalition for America,[108] a lobbying group for atheists and humanists in Washington, DC. In 2007 Hitchens began a series of written debates on the question “Is Christianity Good for the World?” with Christian theologian and pastor, Douglas Wilson, published in Christianity Today magazine.[109] This exchange eventually became a book by the same title in 2008. During their book tour to promote the book, film producer Darren Doane sent a film crew to accompany them. Doane produced the film Collision: “Is Christianity GOOD for the World?” which was released on 27 October 2009.

On November 26, 2010 Hitchens appeared in Toronto, Canada in a debate sponsored by the Munk Foundation over religion with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a Roman Catholic convert. Blair argued religion is a force for good, while Hitchens was against it. Preliminary results on the Munk website said 68 per cent of the votes backed the proposition (Hitchens’ position) before hearing the debate, and 32 per cent against (Blair’s position), with numbers remaining more or less the same after the debate. [110] [111] [112]

Hitchens has been accused by William A. Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Liberties of being particularly anti-Catholic. Hitchens responded, “when religion is attacked in this country […] the Catholic Church comes in for a little more than its fair share”.[113] Hitchens has also been accused of anti-Catholic bigotry by others, including Brent Bozell, Tom Piatak in The American Conservative, and UCLA Law Professor Stephen Bainbridge.[114][115] When Joe Scarborough on March 12, 2004 asked Hitchens whether he was “consumed with hatred for conservative Catholics”, Hitchens responded that he was not and that he just thinks that “all religious belief is sinister and infantile”.[116] Piatak claimed that “A straightforward description of all Hitchens’s anti-Catholic outbursts would fill every page in this magazine”, noting particularly Hitchens’ assertion that U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts should not be confirmed because of his faith.[115]

Regarding his own religious background, Hitchens was raised nominally Christian, and went to Christian boarding schools but from an early age declined to participate in communal prayers. Later in life, Hitchens discovered that he was part Jewish. According to Hitchens, when his brother Peter Hitchens took his fiancée to meet their maternal grandmother, Dodo, who was then in her 90s, Dodo said, “She’s Jewish, isn’t she?” and then announced: “Well, I’ve got something to tell you. So are you.” She said that her real surname was Levin, not Lynn, that her ancestors had the family name Blumenthal, and were from Poland.[117] In an article in the Guardian Unlimited on 14 April 2002, Hitchens says he could be considered Jewish because Jewish descent is matrilineal. His mother was born and raised Jewish, but for reasons known only to herself, decided to conceal this from everyone once she married, and it is believed she never even told her husband of her Jewish upbringing, and her mother aided in this concealment. Peter Hitchens has researched the family tree and says they are one thirty-second Jewish (by ancestral descent), and his great-great grandfather was Nathan Blumenthal of Kempen, Prussia, who emigrated to Leicester.[117]

[edit] Personal life

Hitchens after a talk at The College of New Jersey

[edit] Marriage and children

Hitchens married Eleni Meleagrou, a Greek Cypriot, in 1981. They had two children, Alexander and Sophia. Hitchens left Meleagrou for Carol Blue, an American writer, in 1989.[23] They have one daughter, Antonia.

[edit] Relationship with younger brother

Hitchens’ younger brother by two-and-a-half years, Peter Hitchens, is a Christian and socially conservative journalist in London. The brothers had a protracted falling-out after Peter wrote that Christopher had once joked that he “didn’t care if the Red Army watered its horses at Hendon” (a suburb of London).[118] Christopher denied having said this and broke off contact with his brother. He then referred to his brother as “an idiot” in a letter to Commentary, and the dispute spilled into other publications as well. Christopher eventually expressed a willingness to reconcile and to meet his new nephew; shortly thereafter the brothers gave several interviews together in which they said their personal disagreements had been resolved. They appeared together on the 21 June 2007 edition of BBC current affairs discussion show Question Time. The pair engaged in a formal televised debate for the first time on 3 April 2008, at Grand Valley State University.[119]

[edit] Health and lifestyle

[edit] Smoking and drinking

A June 2006 profile on Hitchens by NPR stated: “Hitchens is known for his love of cigarettes and alcohol — and his prodigious literary output.”[26] However in early 2008 he gave up smoking, undergoing an epiphany in Madison, Wisconsin.[120] His brother Peter later wrote of his surprise at this decision.[121] It was while writing his memoir Hitch-22 that he resumed smoking cigarettes and continued until his cancer diagnosis. Hitchens admits to drinking heavily; in 2003 he wrote that his daily intake of alcohol was enough “to kill or stun the average mule”, noting that many great writers “did some of their finest work when blotto, smashed, polluted, shitfaced, squiffy, whiffled, and three sheets to the wind”.[122]

Anti-war British politician George Galloway, on his way to testify in front of a United States Senate sub-committee investigating the scandals in the U.N. Oil for Food program, called Hitchens a “drink-sodden ex-Trotskyist popinjay“,[123] to which Hitchens quickly replied, “Only some of which is true”.[124] Later, in a column for Slate promoting his debate with Galloway which was to take place on 14 September 2005, he elaborated on his prior response: “He says that I am an ex-Trotskyist (true), a “popinjay” (true enough, since the word’s original Webster’s definition is a target for arrows and shots), and that I cannot hold a drink (here I must protest).”[125]

Oliver Burkeman writes, “Since the parting of ways on Iraq [...] Hitchens claims to have detected a new, personalised nastiness in the attacks on him, especially over his fabled consumption of alcohol. He welcomes being attacked as a drinker ‘because I always think it’s a sign of victory when they move on to the ad hominem.’ He drinks, he says, ‘because it makes other people less boring. I have a great terror of being bored. But I can work with or without it. It takes quite a lot to get me to slur.’”[126]

In his 2010 memoir Hitch-22, Hitchens wrote: “There was a time when I could reckon to outperform all but the most hardened imbibers, but I now drink relatively carefully.” He described his current drinking routine on working-days as follows: “At about half past midday, a decent slug of Mr. Walker’s amber restorative, cut with Perrier water (an ideal delivery system) and no ice. At luncheon, perhaps half a bottle of red wine: not always more but never less. Then back to the desk, and ready to repeat the treatment at the evening meal. No ‘after dinner drinks’ — ​most especially nothing sweet and never, ever any brandy. ‘Nightcaps’ depend on how well the day went, but always the mixture as before. No mixing: no messing around with a gin here and a vodka there.”[127]

[edit] Cancer

On 30 June 2010, Hitchens postponed his book tour for Hitch-22 to undergo treatment for metastatic esophageal cancer[128] that has spread to his lymph nodes and lungs.[129] He first made the announcement of his diagnosis in Vanity Fair magazine. In August, Hitchens discussed his diagnosis with Anderson Cooper on CNN. He told Cooper that the long-term prognosis is far from positive and that when you use cigarettes and alcohol, which he has used heavily, you “make yourself a candidate” for the disease. He also says not to credit any reports that he repented with God. Speaking with The Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg, Hitchens stated that he would be a “very lucky person” to live another five years.[130]

[edit] See also

Atheism portal
Biography portal
Liberalism portal
Journalism portal
Politics portal
Socialism portal
University of Oxford portal

[edit] Film and television appearances

As referenced from the Internet Movie Database, Hitchens Web or Charlie Rose.[131][132][133]

Year Film
1984 Opinions: “Greece to their Rome”
1988 Frontiers
1993 Everything You Need to Know
1994 Tracking Down Maggie: The Unofficial Biography of Margaret Thatcher
1994 Hell’s Angel
1996–2010 Charlie Rose (13 episodes)
1998 Princess Diana: The Mourning After
1999–2002 Dennis Miller Live (4 episodes)
2002 The Trials of Henry Kissinger
2003 Hidden in Plain Sight
2003–2009 Real Time with Bill Maher (6 episodes)
2004 Mel Gibson: God’s Lethal Weapon
2004–2006 Newsnight (3 episodes)
2004–2010 The Daily Show (4 episodes)
2005 Penn & Teller: Bullshit! (1 episode)
2005 The Al Franken Show (1 episode)
2005 Confronting Iraq: Conflict and Hope
2005 Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism
2005–2008 Hardball with Chris Matthews (3 episodes)
2006 American Zeitgeist
2006 Blog Wars
2007 Manufacturing Dissent
2007 Question Time (1 episode)
2007 Your Mommy Kills Animals
2007 Personal Che
2007 Heckler
2007 In Pot We Trust
2008 Discussions with Richard Dawkins: Episode 1: “The Four Horsemen”
2009 Holy Hell
2009 Presidency
2009 Collision: “Is Christianity GOOD for the World?”

[edit] Bibliography

Main article: Bibliography of Christopher Hitchens

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c Christopher Hitchens In Depth Book TV, 2 September 2007 – List of writers can be seen @ 1:13:10
  2. ^ Christopher Hitchens on Sarah Palin: ‘A Disgraceful Opportunist and Moral Coward’ | PoliticalArticles.NET
  3. ^ Prospect (26 July 2008). “Intellectuals—the results”. Prospect. http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2008/07/intellectualstheresults/. Retrieved 4 September 2009.
  4. ^ Duncan Campbell (18 October 2005). “Chomsky is voted world’s top public intellectual”. The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/oct/18/books.highereducation. Retrieved 4 September 2009.
  5. ^ http://www.slate.com/id/2090083/
  6. ^ Eaton, George. The New Statesman Interview: Christopher Hitchens www.newstatesman.com, 12 July 2010. Retrieved November 7, 2010.
  7. ^ Andre Mayer (14 May 2007). “Nothing sacred — Journalist and provocateur Christopher Hitchens picks a fight with God”. CBC. http://www.cbc.ca/arts/books/nothing_sacred.html. Retrieved 29 June 2008.
  8. ^ “God Is Not Great” author, Christopher Hitchens talks about religion, politics, and becoming an American Greater Talent Network, 10 July 2007.
  9. ^ Hitch-22: A Memoir (Hardcover) Amazon.com product information page: Hitch-22: A Memoir. An edition was published in Australia by Allen and Unwin in May: ISBN 978-1-74175-962-4
  10. ^ Peters, Jeremy. “Christopher Hitchens to Begin Cancer Treatment”, The New York Times, 30 June 2010.
  11. ^ a b c d Walsh, John. The Independent. “Hitch-22: a memoir by Christopher Hitchens” Retrieved 28 May 2010
  12. ^ Lynn Barber Look who’s talking The Observer, 14 April 2002
  13. ^ Blake Morrison I contain multitudes, The Guardian, 29 May 2010
  14. ^ Hitchens, Christopher, Hitch-22 (Allen & Unwin, 2010) p. 76 ff.
  15. ^ Levy, Geoffery, “So Who Were the Two Tory Ministers Who Had Gay Flings with Christopher Hitchens at Oxford?”, Daily Mail, 6 March 2010, accessed 30 May 2010
  16. ^ a b Hoover Institution[dead link]
  17. ^ Long Live Labor – Why I’m for Tony Blair Slate, 25 April 2005
  18. ^ a b c d Heaven on Earth – Interview with Christopher Hitchens PBS, 2005
  19. ^ International Socialism: Christopher Hitchens “Workers’ Self Management in Algeria” (1st series), No.51, April-June 1972, p.33 Encyclopedia of Trotskyism, 25 October 2005
  20. ^ Alexander Linklater (May 2008). “Christopher Hitchins”. Prospect Magazine. http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=10157. Retrieved 17 February 2009.
  21. ^ Barber, Lynn (13 April 2002). “Look who’s talking”. The Guardian (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/apr/14/politics. Retrieved 1 April 2010.
  22. ^ For the Sake of Argument by Christopher Hitchens Interview with Brian Lamb for the show Booknotes, an author interview series on C-SPAN (some biographical information) 17 October 1993
  23. ^ a b The Boy Can’t Help It In-depth interview and profile] in New York Magazine, 19 April 1999
  24. ^ a b c “Free Radical”, interview in Reason by Rhys Southan, November 2001
  25. ^ Christopher Hitchens Atlantic Monthly, 2003
  26. ^ a b Guy Raz, Christopher Hitchens, Literary Agent Provocateur, National Public Radio, 21 June 2006
  27. ^ He Knew He Was Right New Yorker, Profiles, 16 October 2006
  28. ^ Christopher Hitchens Notable Interviews – video interview 2007
  29. ^ Christopher Hitchens – Contributing Editor Vanity Fair
  30. ^ Timothy Noah, Meritocracy’s lab rat Slate, 9 January 2002
  31. ^ Annabel’s – the magazine Vogue UK, 15 July 2004
  32. ^ At the Rom: Three New Commandments She Does The City, 30 April 2009
  33. ^ “Childhood’s End”, Vanity Fair, September 2006
  34. ^ “Realism in Sudan”, Slate, 7 November 2005
  35. ^ Christopher Hitchens Twelve Publishers
  36. ^ Detailed Biographical Information – Christopher Hitchens, Lannan Foundation. Retrieved 27 April 2010.
  37. ^ Andrew Werth (January/February 2004). “Hitchens on Books”. Letters to the Editor. The Atlantic. http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2004/01/letters.htm. Retrieved 17 February 2009.
  38. ^ John Banville (3 March 2001). “Gore should be so lucky”. The Irish Times. http://osdir.com/ml/politics.leftists.monkeyfist/2001-04/msg00016.html. Retrieved 17 February 2009.
  39. ^ Gore Vidal on Christopher Hitchens YouTube
  40. ^ Christopher Hitchens (February 2010). “Vidal Loco”. Vanity Fair. http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2010/02/hitchens-201002. Retrieved 24 June 2010.
  41. ^ Youde, Kate (7 February 2010). “Hitchens attacks Gore Vidal for being a ‘crackpot’”. London: The Independent. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/hitchens-attacks-gore-vidal-for-being-a-crackpot-1891753.html. Retrieved 17 February 2009.
  42. ^ Prospect/FP Top 100 Public Intellectuals Results Foreign Policy, registration required
  43. ^ The Prospect/FP Top 100 Public Intellectuals Foreign Policy, registration required
  44. ^ 2007 National Magazine Award Winners Announced Press release, Magazine Publishers of America, 1 May 2007
  45. ^ National Magazine Awards Winners and Finalists Magazine Publishers of America
  46. ^ Authors – Christopher Hitchens The Atlantic
  47. ^ FIVE QUESTIONS FOR: Christopher Hitchens SF Gate
  48. ^ “The 25 Most Influential Liberals In The US Media”. Forbes.com. 22 January 2009. http://www.forbes.com/2009/01/22/influential-media-obama-oped-cx_tv_ee_hra_0122liberal_slide_13.html?thisSpeed=30000. Retrieved 23 November 2009.
  49. ^ Martin Amis Christopher Hitchens a conversation about Antisemitism and Saul bellow Part 3 YouTube
  50. ^ The Revenge of Karl Marx The Atlantic, April 2009
  51. ^ Just a Pretty Face? The Guardian, 11 July 2004
  52. ^ Hitchens, Christopher (1997), “Goodbye to All That”, The New York Review of Books, 17 July 1997
  53. ^ Amis, Martin (2002). Koba the Dread. Miramax. p. 25. ISBN 0786868767.
  54. ^ “Great Lives – Leon Trotsky”, BBC Radio 4, 8 August 2006
  55. ^ Godless Provocateur Christopher Hitchens Pledges Allegiance to America
  56. ^ “That Bleeding Heart Wolfowitz”, Slate, 22 March 2005
  57. ^ “Ahmad and Me”, Slate, 27 May 2004
  58. ^ Johann Hari, “In Enemy Territory: An Interview with Christopher Hitchens”", The Independent, 23 September 2004.
  59. ^ Christopher Hitchens, “The End of Fukuyama”, Slate, 1 March 2006
  60. ^ On Whether Christopher Hitchens Was Wrong Bloggingheads.tv, 14 October 2008
  61. ^ Belz, Mindy. “According to Hitch”, World Magazine, 3 April 2006
  62. ^ a b “A War To Be Proud Of” Weekly Standard, 5 September 2005
  63. ^ Of Sin, the Left & Islamic Fascism The Nation, 8 October 2001
  64. ^ Blaming bin Laden First The Nation, 22 October 2001
  65. ^ Chomsky Replies to Hitchens The Nation, 15 October 2001
  66. ^ A Rejoinder to Noam Chomsky The Nation, 15 October 2001
  67. ^ Reply to Hitchens’s Rejoinder The Nation, 15 October 2001
  68. ^ Taking Sides The Nation, 26 September 2002
  69. ^ My Endorsement and Osama’s Video: The news in Bin Laden’s comments had nothing to do with our election Slate, 1 November 2004]
  70. ^ “Believe Me, It’s Torture”, Vanity Fair, August 2008
  71. ^ On the Waterboard Vanity Fair, 2 July 2008
  72. ^ Lichtblau, Eric. “Two Groups Planning to Sue Over Federal Eavesdropping” The New York Times, 17 January 2006; Retrieved on 5 November 2009
  73. ^ Statement – Christopher Hitchens, NSA Lawsuit Client
  74. ^ Hitchens, Christopher (7 August 1999). “Gov. Death”. Salon.com. http://www.truthinjustice.org/govdeath.htm. Retrieved 10 May 2009.
  75. ^ Pareene, Alex (4 February 2006). “Instant Team Party Crash: Legoland Uber Alles”. wonkette.com. http://wonkette.com/156915/instant-team-party-crash-legoland-uber-alles. Retrieved 9 Dec 2010.
  76. ^ Hitchens, Christopher “Vote for Obama” Slate, 13 October 2008; Retrieved on 5 November 2009
  77. ^ “Frontpage Interview: Christopher Hitchens Part II”. Front Page Magazine. http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=11253. Retrieved 9 May 2007.
  78. ^ “Arafat’s Squalid End”. Slate. http://slate.com/id/2109860/. Retrieved 9 May 2007.
  79. ^ Just a Pretty Face? by Sean O’Hagan, The Observer, 11 July 2004
  80. ^ Belief Watch: Pro-life Atheists NewsWeek
  81. ^ Galloway vs. Hitchens: The Transcript endusmilitarism, 16 September 2005
  82. ^ These Men Are “Peacemakers”? Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams make me want to spew Slate, 2 April 2007
  83. ^ Hitchens, Christopher End of the line The Guardian, 6 December 2000
  84. ^ “In Defense of WWII: Chapter 5 of 5″. Youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VB9uqI62ikA. Retrieved 7 September 2008.
  85. ^ “Shed No Tears for Milosevic”. FrontPage Magazine. 14 March 2006. http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=C83A870D-93BE-4ACD-B8E0-E082B1D313C0. Retrieved 7 September 2008.
  86. ^ Bodansky, Yossef (1996). Some Call It Peace: Waiting for the War In the Balkans. International Media Corp. Ltd. ISBN 0952007053.
  87. ^ Video: Christopher Hitchens (15 May 2007) appearance on Anderson Cooper 360 YouTube
  88. ^ Unmitigated Galloway Weekly Standard, 30 May 2005
  89. ^ Mel Gibson’s Meltdown Slate, 31 July 2006
  90. ^ His material highness Salon.com article by Christopher Hitchens
  91. ^ Unfairenheit 9/11 Slate, 21 June 2004
  92. ^ Christopher Hitchens “Daniel Pipes is not a man of peace“, Slate, 11 August 2003
  93. ^ “The stupidity of Ronald Reagan”. Slate. http://www.slate.com/id/2101842/. Retrieved 9 May 2007.
  94. ^ Christopher Hitchens “Farewell to a Provincial Redneck” Slate, 7 July 2008
  95. ^ Christopher Hitchens, Cindy Sheehan’s Sinister Piffle, Slate, 15 August 2005
  96. ^ Mommie Dearest Slate, 20 October 2003 – Hitchens’s op-ed for Slate regarding Mother Theresa
  97. ^ Living in Thomas Jefferson’s Fictions NPR, 1 June 2005 – Hitchens’s NPR discussion regarding Thomas Jefferson
  98. ^ Why Orwell Still Matters BBC News, 3 July 2002 – Hitchens’ BBC Video Essay in support of George Orwell
  99. ^ Transcript: Bill Moyers Talks with Christopher Hitchens PBS, 20 December 2002
  100. ^ Edward Luce (11 January 2008). “Lunch with the FT: Christopher Hitchens”. Financial Times. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8e37cd84-bcb6-11dc-bcf9-0000779fd2ac.html. Retrieved 12 January 2008.
  101. ^ Michael Kinsley In God, Distrust New York Times Book Review, 13 May 2007
  102. ^ Here’s the hitch by Michael Skapinker in The Financial Times
  103. ^ Associated Press[dead link]
  104. ^ Hardcover Nonfiction New York Times Bestseller list, 3 June 2007
  105. ^ Free Speech onegoodmove, March 2007
  106. ^ Hitchens, Christopher (May 2007). God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. New York: Twelve Books. p. 283.
  107. ^ Honorary Associate: Christopher Hitchens National Secular Society
  108. ^ Biography – Christopher Hitchens Secular Coalition for America Advisory Board
  109. ^ “Is Christianity Good for the World?” Christianity Today, 8 May 2007
  110. ^ [http://news.ca.msn.com/top-stories/cbc-article.aspx?cp-documentid=26520521 Hitchens apparent winner in religion debate. CBC News. Retrieved Nov 27,2010}
  111. ^ Munk Debates Website
  112. ^ Tony Blair debates religion with Christopher Hitchens in Canada, Wikinews.
  113. ^ Look Who's Hammering Mel August 1, 2006
  114. ^ Hood, John Hollowed Be Thy Name Miami Sun Post
  115. ^ a b Tom Piatak, The Purest Neocon: Christopher Hitchens, an unreconstructed Bolshevik, finds his natural home on the pro-war Right, The American Conservative, 2005-10-10
  116. ^ Scarborough County Transcripts for March 12, 2004
  117. ^ a b Look who's talking The Observer, 14 April 2002
  118. ^ Christopher Hitchens,Oh Brother, Where Art Thou The Spectator, 12 October 2001, from FindArticles.com
  119. ^ "Hitchens v. Hitchens: Faith, Politics & War". Grand Valley State University. http://www.gvsu.edu/hauenstein/index.cfm?id=3425B4C3-DA0C-48A1-FDE23503A04A3318. Retrieved 29 March 2008.
  120. ^ Edward Luce, Lunch with the Financial Times, 11 January 2008
  121. ^ Hitchens, Peter (5 April 2008). "Hitchens vs Hitchens ... Peace at last as a lifelong feud between brothers is laid to rest". The Daily Mail. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=557443&in_page_id=1770. Retrieved 8 April 2008.
  122. ^ Christopher Hitchens, Living Proof, Vanity Fair, March 2003
  123. ^ Unmitigated Galloway , The Weekly Standard, 30 May 2005
  124. ^ "There's only one popinjay here, George", Evening Standard, 19 May 2005
  125. ^ George Galloway Is Gruesome, Not Gorgeous, Slate, 13 September 2005
  126. ^ Oliver Burkeman, War of words, The Guardian, 28 October 2006
  127. ^ A Short Footnote on the Grape and the Grain, Slate, 06 June 2010
  128. ^ [1], Washington Post, 30 June 2010
  129. ^ [2], Vanity Fair, September 2010
  130. ^ Goldberg, Jeffrey (2010-08-06). “Hitchens Talks to Goldblog About Cancer and God”. The Atlantic. http://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2010/08/hitchens-talks-to-goldblog-about-cancer-and-god/61072/. Retrieved 2010-09-17.
  131. ^ “Christopher Hitchens”. Internet Movie Database. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0386899/. Retrieved 6 April 2010.
  132. ^ “Hitchens Web”. http://www.hitchensweb.com/. Retrieved 7 April 2010.
  133. ^ “Charlie Rose”. http://www.charlierose.com/. Retrieved 17 August 2010.

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Name Hitchens, Christopher Eric
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Short description Author, journalist and literary critic
Date of birth 13 April 1949
Place of birth Portsmouth, England, UK
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