The writer, journalist and contrarian Christopher Hitchens has died at the age of 62 after crossing the border into the "land of malady" on being diagnosed with an oesophageal cancer in June 2010. Vanity Fair, for which he had written since 1992 and was made contributing editor, marked his death in a memorial article posted late on Thursday night.
The reactions to Hitchens's illness from his intellectual opponents – which ranged from undisguised glee to offers of prayers – testified to his stature as one of the leading voices of secularism since the publication in 2007 of his anti-religious polemic God is Not Great. The reaction from the author himself, who after a lifetime of "burning the candle of both ends" described his illness as "something so predictable and banal that it bores even me", testified to the sharpness of his wit and the clarity of his thinking under fire, as he dissected the discourse of "struggle" that surrounds cancer, paid tribute to the medical staff who looked after him and resolved to "resist bodily as best I can, even if only passively, and to seek the most advanced advice".
Born in 1949, Hitchens was sent to boarding school at the age of eight, his mother deciding: "If there is going to be an upper class in this country, then Christopher is going to be in it." This resolution pursued him to his time at Oxford, where he confessed to leading a "double life" as both an "ally of the working class" and as a guest at cocktail parties where he could meet "near-legendary members of the establishment's firmament on nearly equal terms".
After he graduated in 1970 with a third-class degree, the doors of Fleet Street opened wide for Hitchens, who followed his friend James Fenton into a job at the New Statesman. He began a lifelong friendship with Martin Amis and quickly gained a reputation as a pugnacious leftwing commentator, excoriating targets such as the Roman Catholic church, the Vietnam war and Henry Kissinger in dazzling essays, news reports and book reviews. » | Richard Lea | Friday, December 16, 2011
THE GUARDIAN: Christopher Hitchens obituary: Maverick, polemical journalist whose career was a rollercoaster of love and loathing ¶ For most of his career, Christopher Hitchens, who has died of oesophageal cancer aged 62, was the left's biggest journalistic star, writing and broadcasting with wit, style and originality in a period when such qualities were in short supply among those of similar political persuasion. Nobody else spoke with such confidence and passion for what Americans called "liberalism" and Hitchens (regarding "liberal" as too "evasive") called "socialism". » | Peter Wilby | Friday, December 16, 2011
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Christopher Hitchens: tributes – Contemporaries, friends and admirers of Christopher Hitchens, who has died aged 62, have paid tribute to the contrarian. » | Friday, December 16, 2011
THE INDEPENDENT: Author Christopher Hitchens dies: English-American author and journalist Christopher Hitchens has died after losing his battle with cancer. ¶ The outspoken atheist had been undergoing chemotherapy after being diagnosed with oesophageal cancer last year, but died aged 62 at the MD Anderson Cancer Centre in Houston, Texas, last night. ¶ Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair, where Mr Hitchens was a contributing editor, paid tribute on the magazine's website. ¶ "Christopher Hitchens was a wit, a charmer and a troublemaker, and to those who knew him well, he was a gift from, dare I say, God," he wrote. » | Ellen Branagh | Friday, December 16, 2011
MAIL ONLINE: Writer Christopher Hitchens dies, aged 62, after battle with cancer: • 'Christopher Hitchens was a wit, a charmer and a troublemaker, and to those who knew him well, he was a gift from, dare I say, God' • 'I'm a member of a cancer elite. I rather look down on people with lesser cancers,' he said in an interview with CBS on March 6, 2011 • Smacked in the rear by Margaret Thatcher and beaten up in Beirut, he once submitted to waterboarding to prove it was indeed torture » | David Richards | Friday, December 16, 2011
TELEGRAPH BLOGS – TOBY YOUNG: RIP Christopher Hitchens, the Cicero of the saloon bar: I've known for a couple of days that Christopher Hitchens was about to die and yesterday asked his brother to deliver a farewell note, via email. I was fond of him as an occasional drinking companion, but also admired him as journalist and I said that in the note. I've no idea whether he got it or not, but I hope so. » | Toby Young | Friday, December 16, 2011
