Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens was an author and journalist, whose books included God is not Great and Arguably, a collection of his essays. He died in 2011

  • 'It's all on account of the war'

    Why does Brideshead Revisited have such a strong hold on our imagination? Evelyn Waugh's beautiful dialogue plays its part, argues Christopher Hitchens, but the chief source of the novel's power is its summoning of innocence lost on the fields of Flanders. Never mind that the new film version is a travesty: go back to the book

  • The Grub Street years

    In a speech, President JF Kennedy said that if only Karl Marx 'had remained a foreign correspondent, history might have been different'. How wrong he was, argues Christopher Hitchens. Much of Marx's writing during his years as a hack was a passionate defence of the values that were to inform his political philosophy.

  • A friend in need

    It is unfair to call Blair America's poodle, says Christopher Hitchens, who has been observing Anglo-US relations for a quarter of a century. The transatlantic love affair worked both ways, first with Bill Clinton, then with George Bush ... until Blair muddied the waters over Iraq.

  • Losing the faith

    Christopher Hitchens: Tony Blair's long goodbye is a reminder that politics is a pitiless business.

  • Bones of contention

    Lives and letters: Tom Paine's revolutionary writings continue to be an inspiration, even turning up in some unexpected right-wing quarters. Christopher Hitchens lauds the author of The Rights of Man and The Age of Reason.

  • Fleet Street's finest

    From Evelyn Waugh to Michael Frayn, novelists have portrayed journalists as bibulous, cynical and slothful. But for Christopher Hitchens, the tales of 'unredeemed squalor' and fiddled expenses evoke nostalgia for a vanished age.

  • Giant steps

    Christopher Hitchens salutes Saul Bellow, whose impact on other writers was both monumental and rarely matched.

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