Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens

Hitchens photographed from profile

Hitchens in 2008
Born Christopher Eric Hitchens
(1949-04-13)13 April 1949
Portsmouth, Hampshire, England
Died 15 December 2011(2011-12-15) (aged 62)
Houston, Texas, U.S.
Cause of death Pneumonia (brought on by esophageal cancer)
Nationality
  • British (1949–2011)
  • American (2007–2011)
Education The Leys School
Alma mater Balliol College, Oxford
Spouse(s)
  • Eleni Meleagrou (m. 1981; div. 1989)
  • Carol Blue (m. 1991; his death 2011)[1]
Awards
Signature

Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was an Anglo-American[7] author, columnist, essayist, orator, religious and literary critic, social critic, and journalist. He contributed to New Statesman, The Nation, The Weekly Standard, The Atlantic, London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, Slate, Free Inquiry and Vanity Fair. Hitchens was the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of over 30 books, including five collections of essays, on politics, literature and religion. A staple of public discourse, his confrontational style of debate made him both a lauded intellectual and a controversial public figure.

Hitchens described himself as a Democratic socialist and an anti-totalitarian. He broke from the Trotskyist far left after what he called the "tepid reaction" of the Western left to the controversy over The Satanic Verses, followed by the left's embrace of Bill Clinton, and the antiwar movement's opposition to NATO intervention in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s. His strong support of the Iraq War separated him further. Hitchens' writings include harsh critiques of public figures such as Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, Mother Teresa, and Diana, Princess of Wales.

Hitchens advocated the separation of church and state. As a self-described antitheist he regarded the concept of a god or supreme being as a totalitarian belief that impedes individual freedom. He argued that free expression and scientific discovery should replace religion as a means of informing ethics and defining codes of conduct for human civilization.

He was the elder brother of the conservative journalist and author Peter Hitchens.

Life and career

Early life and education

Hitchens was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, the elder of two boys.[8][9] His parents, Eric Ernest Hitchens (1909–1987) and Yvonne Jean Hitchens (née Hickman; 1921–1973), met in Scotland when both were serving in the Royal Navy during World War II.[10] Later in life, Hitchens identified as ethnically Jewish—since Judaism is matrilineal and his mother was Jewish.[11][12][13] His mother was a "Wren" (a member of the Women's Royal Naval Service),[14] and his father an officer aboard the cruiser HMS Jamaica, which helped sink Nazi Germany's battleship Scharnhorst in the Battle of the North Cape.[4] His father's naval career required the family to move a number of times from base to base throughout Britain and its dependencies, including in Malta, where Christopher's brother Peter was born in Sliema in 1951.

Hitchens's mother sent him to Mount House School (now known as Mount Kelly) in Tavistock in Devon at the age of eight, followed by the independent Leys School in Cambridge.[15] Hitchens then went up to Balliol College, Oxford, where he was tutored by Steven Lukes and Anthony Kenny and read Philosophy, Politics and Economics, graduating in 1970 with a third-class degree.[16] 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.[14] In 1968, he took part in the TV quiz show University Challenge.[17]

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 expressed affinity with the politically charged countercultural and protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s. He avoided the recreational drug use of the time, saying "in my cohort we were slightly anti-hedonistic...it made it very much easier for police provocation to occur, because the planting of drugs was something that happened to almost everyone one knew."[18] Hitchens was inspired to become a journalist after reading a piece by James Cameron.[19]

Hitchens was bisexual during his younger days.[20] Hitchens claimed to have had sexual relations with two male students at Oxford who would later become Conservative ministers during the premiership of Margaret Thatcher, although he would not reveal their names publicly.[21]

Hitchens joined the Labour Party in 1965, but along with the majority of the Labour students' organisation was expelled in 1967, because of what Hitchens called "Prime Minister Harold Wilson's contemptible support for the war in Vietnam".[22] Under the influence of Peter Sedgwick, who translated the writings of Russian revolutionary and Soviet dissident Victor Serge, Hitchens forged an ideological interest in Trotskyism and anti-Stalinist socialism.[14] Shortly after he joined "a small but growing post-Trotskyist Luxemburgist sect".[23]

Journalistic career in the UK (1970–1981)

Hitchens began working as a correspondent for the magazine International Socialism,[24] 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". Their slogan was "Neither Washington nor Moscow but International Socialism".

Hitchens left Oxford with a third-class degree.[25] In 1971 he went to work at the Times Higher Education Supplement where he served as a social science correspondent. Hitchens admitted that he hated the position, and was fired after six months in the job. Next he was a researcher for ITV's Weekend World.[26] In 1973 he went to work for the New Statesman, where his colleagues included the authors Martin Amis, whom he had briefly met at Oxford, Julian Barnes and James Fenton, with whom he had shared a house in Oxford.[26] Around the time that the Friday lunches began, which were attended by writers including Clive James, Ian McEwan, Kingsley Amis, Terence Kilmartin, Robert Conquest, Al Alvarez, Peter Porter, Russell Davies and Mark Boxer. At the New Statesman Hitchens acquired a reputation as a left-winger, reporting internationally from areas of conflict such as Northern Ireland, Libya, and Iraq.[26]

In November 1973, Hitchens's mother committed suicide in Athens in a pact with her lover, a defrocked clergyman named Timothy Bryan.[14] The pair overdosed on sleeping pills in adjoining hotel rooms, and Bryan slashed his wrists in the bathtub. Hitchens flew alone to Athens to recover his mother's body, initially under the impression that his mother had been murdered. Both her children were then independent adults. While in Greece, Hitchens reported on the constitutional crisis of the military junta. It became his first leading article for the New Statesman.[27] In December 1977, Hitchens interviewed Argentine dictator Jorge Rafael Videla, a conversation he later described as "horrifying".[28] In 1977, unhappy at the New Statesman, Hitchens defected to the Daily Express where he became a foreign correspondent. He returned to the New Statesman in 1979 where he became foreign editor.[26]

American writings (1981–2011)

Hitchens went to the United States in 1981, as part of an editor exchange programme between the New Statesman and The Nation.[29] After joining The Nation, he penned vociferous critiques of Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and American foreign policy in South and Central America.[11][30][31][32][33][34] He became a contributing editor of Vanity Fair in 1992,[35] 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,[31] but others — including Hitchens —believe it to be Spy Magazine's "Ironman Nightlife Decathlete" Anthony Haden-Guest.[36] In 1987, his father died from cancer of the oesophagus; the same disease that would later claim his own life.[37] In April 2007, Hitchens became a US citizen. He became a media fellow at the Hoover Institution in September 2008.[38] At Slate, he usually wrote under the news-and-politics column named Fighting Words.[39]

Hitchens spent part of his early career in journalism as a foreign correspondent in Cyprus.[40] Through his work there he met his first wife Eleni Meleagrou, a Greek Cypriot, with whom he had two children, Alexander and Sophia. His son, Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, born in 1984, has worked as a policy researcher in London. Hitchens continued writing essay-style correspondence pieces from a variety of locales, including Chad, Uganda[41] and the Darfur region of Sudan.[42] In 1991, he received a Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction.[43]

Hitchens met Carol Blue in Los Angeles in 1989 and they married in 1991. Hitchens called it love at first sight.[44] In 1999, as harsh critics of Clinton, Hitchens and Carol Blue submitted an affidavit to the trial managers of the Republican Party in the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Therein they swore that their then-friend, Sidney Blumenthal, had described Monica Lewinsky as a stalker. This allegation contradicted Blumenthal's own sworn deposition in the trial,[45] and it resulted in a hostile exchange of opinion in the public sphere between Hitchens and Blumenthal. Following the publication of Blumenthal's The Clinton Wars, Hitchens wrote several pieces in which he accused Blumenthal of manipulating the facts.[45][46] The incident ended their friendship and sparked a personal crisis for Hitchens who was stridently criticised by friends for what they saw as a cynical and ultimately politically futile act.[11]

Before Hitchens's political shift, the American author and polemicist Gore Vidal was apt to speak of Hitchens as his "dauphin" or "heir".[47][48] 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.[49][50] On the back of Hitchens's memoir Hitch-22, among the praise from notable figures, Vidal's endorsement of Hitchens as his successor is crossed out in red and annotated "NO, C.H." His strong advocacy of the war in Iraq had gained Hitchens a wider readership, and in September 2005 he was named as fifth on the list of the "Top 100 Public Intellectuals" by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines.[51] 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. He later responded to his ranking with a few articles about his status as such.[52][53]

Hitchens became a US citizen in 2007. Hitchens did not leave his position writing for The Nation until after the September 11 attacks, stating that he felt the magazine had arrived at a position "that John Ashcroft is a greater menace than Osama bin Laden."[54] The September 11 attacks "exhilarated" him, bringing into focus "a battle between everything I love and everything I hate" and strengthening his embrace of an interventionist foreign policy that challenged "fascism with an Islamic face."[34] His numerous editorials in support of the Iraq War caused some to label him a neoconservative, although Hitchens insisted he was not "a conservative of any kind," and his friend Ian McEwan described him as representing the anti-totalitarian left.[55] Hitchens recalls in his memoir having been "invited by Bernard-Henri Levy to write an essay on political reconsiderations for his magazine La Regle du Jeu. I gave it the partly ironic title: 'Can One Be a Neoconservative?' Impatient with this, some copy editor put it on the cover as 'How I Became a Neoconservative.' Perhaps this was an instance of the Cartesian principle as opposed to the English empiricist one: It was decided that I evidently was what I apparently only thought." Indeed, in a 2010 BBC interview, he stated that he "still [thought] like a Marxist" and considered himself "a leftist."[56]

In 2007, Hitchens's work for Vanity Fair won the National Magazine Award in the category "Columns and Commentary".[57] He was a finalist in the same category in 2008 for some of his columns in Slate but lost out to Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone.[58] He won the National Magazine Award for Columns about Cancer in 2011.[59][60] Hitchens also served on the Advisory Board of Secular Coalition for America and offered advice to the Coalition on the acceptance and inclusion of nontheism in American life.[61] In December 2011, prior to his death, Asteroid 57901 Hitchens was named after him.[62]

Literature reviews

Hitchens wrote a monthly essay in The Atlantic[63] and occasionally contributed to other literary journals. One of his books, Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere, collected these works. 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 In Depth interview on Book TV, he named authors who influenced his views, including Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Evelyn Waugh, Kingsley Amis, P. G. Wodehouse and Conor Cruise O'Brien.[4]

Political views

My own opinion is enough for me, and I claim the right to have it defended against any consensus, any majority, anywhere, anyplace, anytime. And anyone who disagrees with this can pick a number, get in line and kiss my arse.

—Christopher Hitchens[64]

In 2009 Hitchens was listed by Forbes magazine as one of the "25 most influential liberals in the U.S. media".[65] The same article noted, however, that he would "likely be aghast to find himself on this list", as it reduces his self-styled radicalism to mere liberalism. Hitchens's political perspectives also appear in his wide-ranging writings, which include many dialogues.[66]

Hitchens said of libertarianism, “I have always found it quaint, and rather touching, that there is a movement in the US that thinks Americans are not yet selfish enough.”[67]

While Hitchens supported Israel's right to exist, he was often critical of the Israeli government's handling of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Having long described himself as a socialist and a Marxist, Hitchens began his break from the established political left after what he called the "tepid reaction" of the Western left to the controversy over The Satanic Verses, followed by the left's embrace of Bill Clinton, and the antiwar movement's opposition to NATO intervention in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s. He later became a liberal hawk and supported the War on Terror, but he had some reservation, such as his characterization of waterboarding as "torture". 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 NSA warrantless surveillance; the lawsuit was filed by the ACLU.[68][69]

Critiques of specific individuals

Hitchens wrote book-length biographical essays about Thomas Jefferson (Thomas Jefferson: Author of America), Thomas Paine (Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man": A Biography) and George Orwell (Why Orwell Matters).

He became known for his critiques of public contemporary figures including Mother Teresa, Bill Clinton and Henry Kissinger— the subjects of three separate full length texts, The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice, No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton, and The Trial of Henry Kissinger.

Other of Hitchens's critiques took the form of short opinion pieces or lengthy lectures, including his critiques of Jerry Falwell,[70][71] George Galloway,[72] Slobodan Milošević,[73] Mel Gibson,[74] the 14th Dalai Lama,[75] Michael Moore,[76] Daniel Pipes,[77] Ronald Reagan,[78] Jesse Helms,[79] and Cindy Sheehan.[23][80]

Criticism of religion

Hitchens was an antitheist, and said 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."[81] He often spoke against the Abrahamic religions. When asked by readers of The Independent (London) what he considered to be the "axis of evil", Hitchens replied "Christianity, Judaism, Islam—the three leading monotheisms."[82] 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 of Jewish descent on his mother's side. Hitchens's Jewish-born ancestors were immigrants from Eastern Europe (including Poland).[13][83][84] In a 2010 interview at New York Public Library, Hitchens stated that he was against infant circumcision.

His bestseller God Is Not Great affirmed Hitchens's position in the "New Atheism" movement, and he was made an Honorary Associates of the Rationalist International and the National Secular Society.[85] Hitchens said he would accept an invitation from any religious leader who wished to debate with him. He also served on the advisory board of the Secular Coalition for America,[61] a lobbying group for atheists and humanists in Washington, DC. On 30 September 2007, Richard Dawkins, Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett met at Hitchens's residence for a private, unmoderated discussion that lasted two hours. The event was videotaped and titled "The Four Horsemen".[86] In it, Hitchens stated at one point that he considered the Maccabean Revolt the most unfortunate event in human history due to the reversion from Hellenistic thought and philosophy that its success constituted.[87] That year, 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.[88] This exchange eventually became a book by the same title in 2008. During their promotional tour of the book, they were accompanied by the producer Darren Doane's film crew. Doane produced the film Collision: Is Christianity GOOD for the World?, which was released on 27 October 2009. On 4 April 2009 Hitchens debated William Lane Craig on the existence of God at Biola University.[89] In God Is Not Great, he expanded his criticism to include all religions, including those rarely criticised by Western secularists, such as Buddhism and neo-paganism. The book received mixed responses, from praise in The New York Times for his "logical flourishes and conundrums"[90] to accusations of "intellectual and moral shabbiness" in the Financial Times.[91] God Is Not Great was nominated for a National Book Award on 10 October 2007.[92] Hitchens said that organised religion is "the main source of hatred in the world",[93] "[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: [it] ought to have a great deal on its conscience". Hitchens therefore says in God Is Not Great that humanity is in need of a renewed Enlightenment.[94]

In February 2010, Christopher Hitchens was named to the Honorary Board of distinguished achievers of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.[95] On 26 November 2010, Hitchens appeared in Toronto, Ontario at the Munk Debates, where he debated religion with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a convert to Roman Catholicism. Blair argued religion is a force for good, while Hitchens was against it.[96]

The dictum "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence", widely attributed to Hitchens, has become known as Hitchens's razor.[97][98]

Personal life

Hitchens after a talk at The College of New Jersey in March 2009

Hitchens was married twice, first to Eleni Meleagrou,[99] a Greek Cypriot in 1981; the couple had a son, Alexander, and a daughter, Sophia. In 1991, Hitchens married Carol Blue, an American screenwriter,[11] in a ceremony held at the apartment of Victor Navasky, editor of The Nation. They had a daughter, Antonia.[11]

Hitchens's father, Eric, was a commander in the British Royal Navy; Christopher often referred to him as simply the 'Commander'. Eric was deployed on HMS Jamaica which took part in the sinking of the German battleship Scharnhorst in the Battle of the North Cape on 26 December 1943. Christopher would pay tribute to his father's contribution to the war: "Sending a Nazi convoy raider to the bottom is a better day's work than any I have ever done." He also stated that "the remark that most summed him [his father] up was the flat statement that the war of 1939 to 1945 had been 'the only time when I really felt I knew what I was doing'."[100]

His mother, Yvonne, died in Athens in 1973 in an apparent suicide pact with her boyfriend, Reverend Timothy Bryan.[14][101] His younger brother Peter Hitchens, is a Christian and socially conservative journalist.

Illness and death

Hitchens in 2010

In June 2010, Hitchens was on tour in New York promoting his memoirs Hitch-22 when he was taken into emergency care suffering from a severe pericardial effusion and then announced he was postponing his tour to undergo treatment for esophageal cancer.[102] He announced that he was undergoing treatment in a Vanity Fair piece titled "Topic of Cancer".[37] Hitchens said that he recognised the long-term prognosis was far from positive, and that he would be a "very lucky person to live another five years".[103] During his illness, Hitchens was under the care of Francis Collins and was the subject of Collins's new cancer treatment, which maps out the human genome and selectively targets damaged DNA.[104][105]

Hitchens died on 15 December 2011 at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.[106] According to Andrew Sullivan, his last words were "Capitalism. Downfall."[107][108] In accordance with his wishes, his body was donated to medical research.[109] Hitchens wrote a book-length work about his last illness, based on his Vanity Fair columns. Mortality was published in September 2012.[110]

Reactions to death

Former British prime minister Tony Blair and Hitchens at the Munk debate on religion, Toronto, November 2010

Former British prime minister Tony Blair said, "Christopher Hitchens was a complete one-off, an amazing mixture of writer, journalist, polemicist, and unique character. He was fearless in the pursuit of truth and any cause in which he believed. And there was no belief he held that he did not advocate with passion, commitment, and brilliance. He was an extraordinary, compelling, and colourful human being whom it was a privilege to know."[111]

Richard Dawkins, a friend of Hitchens, said, "I think he was one of the greatest orators of all time. He was a polymath, a wit, immensely knowledgeable, and a valiant fighter against all tyrants, including imaginary supernatural ones."[111]

American theoretical physicist and cosmologist Lawrence Krauss, also a friend of Hitchens, said, "Christopher was a beacon of knowledge and light in a world that constantly threatens to extinguish both. He had the courage to accept the world for just what it is and not what he wanted it to be. That's the highest praise, I believe, one can give to any intellect. He understood that the universe doesn't care about our existence or welfare and he epitomized the realization that our lives have meaning only to the extent that we give them meaning."[112][113] Bill Maher paid tribute to Hitchens on his show Real Time with Bill Maher, saying, "We lost a hero of mine, a friend, and one of the great talk show guests of all time."[114] Sir Salman Rushdie and English comedian Stephen Fry paid tribute at the Christopher Hitchens Vanity Fair Memorial 2012.[115][116][117][118] Three weeks before Hitchens's death, George Eaton of the New Statesman wrote, "He is determined to ensure that he is not remembered simply as a 'lefty who turned right' or as a contrarian and provocateur. Throughout his career, he has retained a commitment to the Enlightenment values of reason, secularism and pluralism. His targets—Mother Teresa, Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, God—are chosen not at random, but rather because they have offended one or more of these principles. The tragedy of Hitchens's illness is that it came at a time when he enjoyed a larger audience than ever. The great polemicist is certain to be remembered, but, as he is increasingly aware, perhaps not as he would like."[119] The Chronicle of Higher Education asked if Hitchens was the last public intellectual.[120]

In 2015, an annual prize of $50,000 was established in his honor for "an author or journalist whose work reflects a commitment to free expression and inquiry, a range and depth of intellect, and a willingness to pursue the truth without regard to personal or professional consequence."[121]

Film and television appearances

Year Film, DVD, or TV Episode
1984 Opinions: "Greece to their Rome"
1988 Frontiers
1993 Everything You Need to Know
The Opinions Debate[122]
1994 Tracking Down Maggie: The Unofficial Biography of Margaret Thatcher
Hell's Angel (documentary)
1996 Where's Elvis This Week?
1996–2010 Charlie Rose (13 episodes)
1998 Princess Diana: The Mourning After
1999–2001 Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher
1999–2002 Dennis Miller Live (TV show; 4 episodes)
2002 The Trials of Henry Kissinger
2003 Hidden in Plain Sight
2003–2009 Real Time with Bill Maher (TV show; 6 episodes)
2004 Mel Gibson: God's Lethal Weapon
2004–2006 Newsnight (TV show; 3 episodes)
2004–2010 The Daily Show (TV show; 4 episodes)
2005 Penn & Teller: Bullshit! (TV show; 1 episode, s03e05)
The Al Franken Show (Radio show; 1 episode)
Confronting Iraq: Conflict and Hope
Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism
2005–08 Hardball with Chris Matthews (TV show; 3 episodes)
2006 American Zeitgeist
Blog Wars
2007 Manufacturing Dissent
Question Time (1 episode)
Your Mommy Kills Animals
Personal Che
Heckler
In Pot We Trust
Hannity's America
2008 Can Atheism Save Europe? (DVD; 9 August 2008 debate with John Lennox at the Edinburgh International Festival)
Discussions with Richard Dawkins: Episode 1: "The Four Horsemen" (DVD; 30 September 2007)
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

2009 Holy Hell (Chap. 5 in 6 Part Web Film on iTunes)[123]
God on Trial (DVD; September 2008 debate with Dinesh D'Souza)
President: A Political Road Trip
Collision: "Is Christianity GOOD for the World?" (DVD; Fall 2008 debates with Douglas Wilson)
Does God Exist? (DVD; 4 April 2009 debate with William Lane Craig)
Fighting Words[124] (TV Movie; 2009)
2010 Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune
The God Debates, Part I: A Spirited Discussion (DVD; debate with Shmuley Boteach; Host: Mark Derry; Commentary: Miles Redfield)
2011 Is God Great? (DVD; 3 March 2009 debate with John Lennox at Samford University)
92Y: Christopher Hitchens (DVD; 8 June 2010 dialogue with Salman Rushdie at 92nd Street Y)
ABC Lateline[125] (TV show, 2 episodes)
2013 Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia[126] (DVD Documentary)

Books

Christopher Hitchens reading his book Hitch-22 (2010).

References

  1. ↑ Woo, Elaine (15 December 2011). "Christopher Hitchens dies at 62; engaging, enraging author and essayist". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 27 January 2013.
  2. ↑ Marr, Andrew (24 June 2002). "Christopher Hitchens on George Orwell". BBC. NetCharles.com. Archived from the original on 17 December 2003. Retrieved 17 December 2011.
  3. ↑ Hitchens, Christopher (2008). Christopher Hitchens and his Critics. New York University Press. p. 264. ISBN 0814716873.
  4. 1 2 3 "In Depth with Christopher Hitchens". BookTV. 2 September 2007. C-SPAN. Retrieved 23 April 2016.; List of writers can be seen @ 1:13:10
  5. ↑ Kennard, Matt (17 April 2011). "Johann Hari on Chomsky, Hitchens, Iraq, and anarchism". Thecommentfactory.com. Retrieved 26 April 2011.
  6. ↑ Alter, Alexandra (11 May 2010). "A Friendship for the Pages". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 23 April 2016.
  7. ↑ Morrow, Julian (Producer) (June 7, 2010). Christopher Hitchens: "Hitch-22" (Interview) (Audio-visual recording). Sydney Writer's Festival, Sydney, Australia: ABC. Retrieved August 6, 2016. Julian Morrow: "How do you identify yourself now?" Christopher Hitchens: "Anglo-American. I mean I didn't move to the United States until I was about 30, so it would be silly to say I'd left everything behind." Audience member:"If you had to give up one, which passport would it be? The British or the American?" Christopher Hitchens:"That's a waste of a question." Audience member:<embarrassed groan> Christopher Hitchens:<adamantly>"Anglo-American"
  8. ↑ Wilby, Peter. "Christopher Hitchens obituary". the Guardian. Retrieved 30 September 2014.
  9. ↑ "Results for England & Wales Births 1837–2006". findmypast. Retrieved 10 June 2015.
  10. ↑ Yglesias, Matthew (20 October 2003). "The Commander: My Father, Eric Hitchens". Slate. Retrieved 16 December 2011.
  11. 1 2 3 4 5 Gordon, Meryl (8 May 2007). "The Boy Can't Help It". NYMag.com. Retrieved 30 September 2014.
  12. ↑ Tracy, Marc (19 December 2011). "On Christopher Hitchens' Jewishness". Tablet Magazine. Retrieved 23 April 2016.
  13. 1 2 Barber, Lynn (14 April 2002). "Look who's talking". The Observer. Retrieved 1 June 2005.
  14. 1 2 3 4 5 Walsh, John (27 May 2010). "Hitch-22: a memoir by Christopher Hitchens". The Independent. Retrieved 28 May 2010.
  15. ↑ Barber, Lynn (14 April 2002). "Look who's talking". The Observer. Retrieved 15 April 2016.
  16. ↑ "Obituary: Christopher Hitchens". BBC. 16 December 2011.
  17. ↑ Morrison, Blake (29 May 2010). "I contain multitudes". The Guardian. Retrieved 16 April 2016.
  18. ↑ Robinson, Peter (15 September 2007). "You said you wanted a revolution: 1968 and the Counter-Counterculture (Peter Robinson interview with William Buckley Jr and Christopher Hitchens)". web.archive.org. Hoover Institution. Archived from the original on 15 September 2007. Retrieved 12 October 2012.
  19. ↑ Barber, Lynn (14 April 2002). "Look who's talking". The Observer. Retrieved 30 June 2015.
  20. ↑ Aitkenhead, Decca (21 May 2010). "Christopher Hitchens: 'I was right and they were wrong'". The Guardian. Retrieved 26 January 2015.
  21. ↑ Levy, Geoffery (6 March 2010). "So Who Were the Two Tory Ministers Who Had Gay Flings with Christopher Hitchens at Oxford?". Daily Mail. Retrieved 30 May 2010.
  22. ↑ Hitchens, Christopher (25 April 2005). "Long Live Labor – Why I'm for Tony Blair". Slate. Retrieved 16 April 2016.
  23. 1 2 Hithens, Christopher (1 January 2005). "Heaven on Earth – Interview with Christopher Hitchens". PBS. Archived from the original on 12 June 2006. Retrieved 1 January 2006.
  24. ↑ Hitchens, Christopher (1 April 1972). "International Socialism: Christopher Hitchens "Workers' Self Management in Algeria" (1st series)". Encyclopedia of Trotskyism (51, April–June 1972). p. 33. Retrieved 15 April 2016.
  25. ↑ Linklater, Alexander (May 2008). "Christopher Hitchins". Prospect. Archived from the original on 30 April 2008. Retrieved 17 February 2009.
  26. 1 2 3 4 Eaton, George (2 January 2012). "Christopher Hitchens: the New Statesman years". The New Statesman. Retrieved 23 April 2016.
  27. ↑ Barber, Lynn (13 April 2002). "Look who's talking". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 1 April 2010.
  28. ↑ Hitchens, Christopher (17 October 2006). "Kissinger Declassified". Vanity Fair. Retrieved 23 April 2016.
  29. ↑ Navasky, Victor (21 December 2011). "Remembering Hitchens". The Nation. Retrieved 15 April 2016.
  30. ↑ Lamb, Brian (17 October 1993). "For the Sake of Argument by Christopher Hitchens". Archived from the original on 17 November 2010. Retrieved 1 April 2012.
  31. 1 2 Southan, Rhys (November 2001). "Free Radical". Reason. Retrieved 2015-06-10.
  32. ↑ "Christopher Hitchens". The Atlantic. 1 January 2003. Retrieved 1 January 2012.
  33. ↑ Raz, Guy (21 June 2006). "Christopher Hitchens, Literary Agent Provocateur". National Public Radio. Archived from the original on 1 January 2012. Retrieved 10 June 2008.
  34. 1 2 Parker, Ian (16 October 2006). "He Knew He Was Right". The New Yorker. Retrieved 10 June 2007.
  35. ↑ "Christopher Hitchens – Contributing Editor". Vanity Fair. Retrieved 23 December 2011.
  36. ↑ Noah, Timothy (9 January 2002). "Meritocracy's lab rat". Slate. Retrieved 1 January 2012.
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  38. ↑ Hitchens, Christopher (18 December 2009). "Christopher Hitchens on Sarah Palin: 'A Disgraceful Opportunist and Moral Coward'". PoliticalArticles.NET. Archived from the original on 14 May 2011. Retrieved 26 April 2011.
  39. ↑ "Fighting Words". Slate.
  40. ↑ Christie, Heather (30 April 2009). "At the Rom: Three New Commandments". She Does The City,. Retrieved 1 January 2012.
  41. ↑ Hitchens, Christopher (September 2006). "Childhood's End". Vanity Fair. Retrieved 1 April 2013.
  42. ↑ Hitchens, Christopher (7 November 2005). "Realism in Sudan". Slate. Retrieved 1 July 2006.
  43. ↑ Detailed Biographical Information – Christopher Hitchens at the Wayback Machine (archived 14 November 2004), Lannan Foundation. Retrieved 27 April 2010.
  44. ↑ Blue, Carol (15 October 2012). "An afterword to the life of Christopher Hitchens – Late Night Live – ABC Radio National (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)". Radio National. Retrieved 30 September 2014.
  45. 1 2 Marshall, Joshua Micah (9 February 1999). "Salon Newsreal | Stalking Sidney Blumenthal". Salon.com. Retrieved 26 April 2011.
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  47. ↑ Werth, Andrew (January–February 2004). "Hitchens on Books". The Atlantic. Retrieved 17 February 2009.
  48. ↑ Banville, John (3 March 2001). "Gore should be so lucky". The Irish Times. Retrieved 17 February 2009.
  49. ↑ Hitchens, Christopher (February 2010). "Vidal Loco". Vanity Fair. Retrieved 24 June 2010.
  50. ↑ Youde, Kate (7 February 2010). "Hitchens attacks Gore Vidal for being a 'crackpot'". The Independent. London. Retrieved 17 February 2009.
  51. ↑ "Top 100 Public Intellectuals Results". The Foreign Policy Group. 15 May 2008. Archived from the original on 11 June 2015. Retrieved 1 January 2006.
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  53. ↑ Hitchens, Christopher (7 October 2009). "The Plight of the Public Intellectual". Foreign Policy. Retrieved 1 May 2016.
  54. ↑ Chomsky, Noam (15 October 2001). "Reply to Hitchens's Rejoinder". The Nation. Retrieved 1 June 2005.
  55. ↑ Eaton, George (12 July 2010). "Interview: Christopher Hitchens". The New Statesman. Retrieved 7 November 2010.
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  57. ↑ "2007 National Magazine Award Winners Announced". Magazine Publishers of America. 1 May 2007. Archived from the original on 14 January 2009. Retrieved 1 June 2007.
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  59. ↑ "Christopher Hitchens Wins National Magazine Award for Columns About Cancer". Vanity Fair. 10 May 2011. Retrieved 16 December 2011.
  60. ↑ "2011 National Magazine Awards Winners and Finalists". Magazine Publishers of America. 9 May 2011. Archived from the original on 1 July 2011. Retrieved 1 June 2011.
  61. 1 2 "Secular Coalition for America Advisory Board Biography". Secular.org. Retrieved 20 July 2011.
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  63. ↑ "Authors – Christopher Hitchens". The Atlantic. Retrieved 1 April 2010.
  64. ↑ The Immortal Rejoinders of Christopher Hitchens. Vanity Fair (videotape). Vanity Fair. 13 January 2014. 2:40 minutes in. Retrieved 25 February 2016.
  65. ↑ "The 25 Most Influential Liberals in the US Media". Forbes. 22 January 2009. Retrieved 23 November 2009.
  66. ↑ Dalrymple, Theodore (June–July 2010). "The Brothers Grim". First Things. Archived from the original on 25 August 2011. Retrieved 25 December 2013.
  67. ↑ DAVID MASCIOTRA (1 March 2015). "Libertarianism is for petulant children: Ayn Rand, Rand Paul and the movement’s sad “rebellion”". salon.com.
  68. ↑ Lichtblau, Eric (17 January 2006). "Two Groups Planning to Sue Over Federal Eavesdropping". The New York Times. Retrieved 18 December 2011.
  69. ↑ Hitchens, Christopher (16 January 2006). "Statement – Christopher Hitchens, NSA Lawsuit Client". Aclu.org. Retrieved 18 December 2011.
  70. ↑ Video: Christopher Hitchens (15 May 2007) appearance on Anderson Cooper 360 on YouTube
  71. ↑ Video: Christopher Hitchens (16 May 2007) appearance on Hannity & Colmes about Rev. Falwell's Death on YouTube
  72. ↑ Hitchens, Christopher (30 May 2005). "Unmitigated Galloway". Weekly Standard. Retrieved 1 July 2005.
  73. ↑ Hitchens, Christopher (13 March 2006). "No Sympathy for Slobo". Slate. Retrieved 27 June 2016.
  74. ↑ Hitchens, Christopher (31 July 2006). "Mel Gibson's Meltdown". Slate. Retrieved 1 September 2006.
  75. ↑ Hitchens, Christopher (1 July 1998). "His material highness". Salon.com. Retrieved 1 July 2005.
  76. ↑ Hitchens, Christopher (21 June 2004). "Unfairenheit 9/11". Slate. Retrieved 1 July 2006.
  77. ↑ Hitchens, Christopher (11 August 2003). "Daniel Pipes is not a man of peace". Slate. Retrieved 1 February 2004.
  78. ↑ Hitchens, Christopher (7 June 2004). "The stupidity of Ronald Reagan". Slate. Retrieved 9 May 2007.
  79. ↑ Hitchens, Christopher (7 July 2008). "Farewell to a Provincial Redneck". Slate. Retrieved 21 September 2008.
  80. ↑ Hitchens, Christopher (15 August 2005). "Cindy Sheehan's Sinister Piffle". Slate. Retrieved 1 September 2005.
  81. ↑ Mayer, Andre (14 May 2007). "Nothing sacred – Journalist and provocateur Christopher Hitchens picks a fight with God". Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Archived from the original on 16 May 2007. Retrieved 2 May 2014.
  82. ↑ "Christopher Hitchens: You ask the questions". The Independent. London. 6 March 2002. Retrieved 1 May 2008.
  83. ↑ Hitchens, Christopher (2010). Hitch-22: A Memoir. Twelve. p. 352. ISBN 978-0-446-54033-9.
  84. ↑ "Karaite FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions About Karaism". Retrieved 1 May 2005. In the Tanakh itself, Jewishness is traced primarily patrilineally. Thus, Dorothy Levin would be considered a Patrilineal Jew and a Levit—that is, a Levite woman. But her children would be considered only gentiles of Jewish descent.
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  86. ↑ Dawkins, Richard (1 October 2013). "The Four Horsemen DVD". Richard Dawkins Foundation. Retrieved April 13, 2016.
  87. ↑ Video on YouTube. Approximately 112 minutes in, Hitchens contends, 'The moment where everything went wrong is the moment when the Jewish hellenists were defeated by the Jewish messiahs, the celebration now benignly known as Hanukkah.'
  88. ↑ Hitchens, Christopher (8 May 2007). "Is Christianity Good for the World? Christopher Hitchens and Douglas Wilson debate". Christianity Today. Retrieved 1 June 2007.
  89. ↑ Guthrie, Stan (6 April 2009). "Hitchens vs. Caig: Round Two". Christianity Today. Retrieved 1 May 2009.
  90. ↑ Kinsley, Michael (13 May 2007). "In god, Distrust". The New York Times Book Review. Retrieved 1 June 2007.
  91. ↑ Skapinker, Michael (22 June 2007). "Here's the hitch". The Financial Times. Archived from the original on 2 July 2007. Retrieved 30 June 2007. (Subscription required (help)).
  92. ↑ Italie, Hillel (14 October 2007). "The Associated Press: Hitchens Among Book Award Finalists". Associated Press. Retrieved 1 December 2007.
  93. ↑ Hitchens, Christopher (1 March 2007). "Free Speech". Onegoodmove. Retrieved 1 May 2007.
  94. ↑ Hitchens, Christopher (May 2007). God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. New York: Twelve Books. p. 283.
  95. ↑ "Honorary FFRF Board Announced". Archived from the original on 17 December 2010. Retrieved 20 August 2008.
  96. ↑ "Hitchens apparent winner in religion debate". CBC News. 27 November 2010. Retrieved 26 April 2011.
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  98. ↑ McGrattan, Cillian (2016). The Politics of Trauma and Peace-Building: Lessons from Northern Ireland. Abingdon: Routledge. p. 2. ISBN 978-1138775183.
  99. ↑ Grimes, William (16 December 2011). "Christopher Hitchens, Polemicist Who Slashed All, Freely, Dies at 62". New York Times. Retrieved 10 January 2014.
  100. ↑ Hichens, Christopher (2 June 2010). "The Commander: My Father, Eric Hitchens". Slate.com. Retrieved 14 April 2012.
  101. ↑ Barber, Lynn (13 April 2002). "Lynn Barber meets Christopher Hitchens". The Guardian. Retrieved 14 April 2012.
  102. ↑ "Reliable Source – Christopher Hitchens diagnosed with cancer, cuts short his book tour". The Washington Post. Retrieved 16 December 2011.
  103. ↑ Goldberg, Jeffrey (6 August 2010). "Hitchens Talks to Goldblog About Cancer and God". The Atlantic. Retrieved 17 September 2010.
  104. ↑ Neville, Simon (26 March 2011). "Atheist Christopher Hitchens turns to evangelical Christian doctor in his fight against cancer". Daily Mail. UK. Retrieved 16 December 2011. Dr Francis Collins, the former director of the National Human Genome Research Project was one part of the team which developed techniques to map out the entire human DNA make-up is using Hitchens as a guinea pig for a new treatment. Hitchens, author of God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, has had his genome mapped out in its entirety by taking DNA from healthy tissue and from his cancerous tumour.
  105. ↑ Cole, Ethan (29 March 2011). "Atheist Hitchens Credits Evangelical Francis Collins for Cancer Hope". The Christian Post. Retrieved 16 December 2011. In an interview with U.K. Telegraph Magazine, Hitchens said that Collins, who was formerly the director of the National Center for Human Genome Research and now serves as director of the National Institutes of Health, is partially responsible for developing a new cancer treatment that maps out the patient's entire genetic make-up and targets damaged DNA.
  106. ↑ Grimes, William (2011-12-16). "Christopher Hitchens Is Dead at 62 – Obituary". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-03-04.
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  108. ↑ Popescu, Lucy (30 April 2012). "Mortality, by Christopher Hitchens". The Independent. Retrieved 16 September 2012.
  109. ↑ "Memorial gatherings and the body of Christ(opher)". Daily Hitchens at Blogspot. 24 December 2011. Retrieved 2015-06-10.
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  113. ↑ "Transcript of Lawrence Krauss' tribute to Christopher Hitchens". atheistfoundation.org. 2012.
  114. ↑ Real Time with Bill Maher Season 10, episode 1
  115. ↑ Flood, Alison (16 December 2011). "Christopher Hitchens: tributes and reactions". The Guardian. Retrieved 28 April 2016.
  116. ↑ "Christopher Hitchens's Memorial: Sean Penn, Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, and Others Pay Tribute". Vanity Fair. 20 April 2012. Retrieved 28 April 2016.
  117. ↑ Staff (16 December 2011). "Tributes paid to journalist Christopher Hitchens". BBC News. Retrieved 28 April 2016.
  118. ↑ Pilkington, Ed (20 April 2012). "Christopher Hitchens' wit and warmth remembered as New York pays tribute". The Guardian.
  119. ↑ Eaton, George (24 November 2011). "Hitch's Rolls-Royce mind is still purring". The New Statesman. Retrieved 28 April 2016.
  120. ↑ Jacoby, Russell (18 December 2011). "Christopher Hitchens: The Last Public Intellectual?". The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved 1 May 2016.
  121. ↑ About – DVRF – The Dennis & Victoria Ross Foundation
  122. ↑ The Opinions Debate, transmitted by Channel 4 on 28 March 1993 (the eve of the 50th birthday of the then Prime Minister John Major)
  123. ↑ Cangialosi, Jason. "Interview with 'Holy Hell' Filmmaker Rafael Antonio Ruiz". Yahoo! Inc. Archived from the original on 30 May 2013. Retrieved 1 February 2013.
  124. ↑ IMDB, Fighting Words (2009)
  125. ↑ "ABC Lateline interview: Hitchens stares death in the eye – Part 2". Retrieved 10 August 2012.
  126. ↑ IMBD: Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia (2013)
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