From The Telegraph:
Writing in his memoirs, Hitch-22, of the numerous perils that he has faced as a reporter around the globe in places as various as Afghanistan, Northern Ireland and Beirut, Christopher Hitchens reflects that a little danger or discomfort can be a salutary thing: 'I still make sure to go, at least once every year, to a country where things cannot be taken for granted, and where there is either too much law and order or too little.’ He could never have guessed how prescient those words would be. In June last year, while on a tour of America to promote the hardback publication of his book, Hitchens was taken ill in New York and was subsequently diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus. Thus did he acquire his visa to a place where nothing can be taken for granted. Hitchens has christened it 'Tumourville’.
Until the publication three years ago of his book God Is Not Great Hitchens had been, in the words of his late friend the author Susan Sontag, 'a sovereign figure in the small world of those who tilled the field of ideas’ – but largely unknown outside it. He reviewed books for Atlantic magazine, wrote regular columns for Vanity Fair and Slate, and regularly appeared on cable news programmes in America. To those who follow not only politics but also the fortunes of those who commentate on politics, he was well-known for his perceived move from Left to Right over the war in Iraq.
More here.
