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.
He wrote: “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 died today at the MD Anderson Cancer Centre, in Houston, after a punishing
battle with oesophageal cancer, the same disease that killed his father.”
He said Mr Hitchens would be remembered for his “elevated but inclusive
humour” and a “staggering, almost punishing memory that held up under the
most liquid of late-night conditions”.
He added: “And to all of us, his readers, Christopher Hitchens will be
remembered for the millions of words he left behind. They are his legacy.
And, God love him, it was his will.”
The joint English and American citizen, who is survived by his wife and three
children, was born in Portsmouth, Hants the son of a naval
officer and educated at private school and Oxford University.
A columnist and literary critic, he often appeared on talk shows and gave
lectures.
The publication of his 2007 book God Is Not Great made him a major celebrity
in his adopted homeland of the United States he became a US
citizen in 2007.
Mr Hitchens famously volunteered to be waterboarded to show how it could be
used as a means of torture.
An outspoken atheist, he took on former prime minister Tony Blair in a
televised debate last year in Toronto, Canada, linking God to a “celestial
dictatorship, a kind of divine North Korea”.
His memoir Hitch-22 was published last year, the same year he was diagnosed
with oesophageal cancer.
In an interview last November, he told the BBC the cancer had spread to his
lymph nodes and was possibly brought on by his “bohemian and rackety life”.