Tributes pour in for journalist and atheist Hitchens

TRIBUTES poured in yesterday for journalist and atheist intellectual Christopher Hitchens, who died aged 62.

Hitchens, who was British, made the US his home and backed the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. He died in Houston of pneumonia, a complication of cancer of the oesophagus, Vanity Fair magazine said.

“Christopher Hitchens — the incomparable critic, masterful rhetorician, fiery wit, and fearless bon vivant — died at the age of 62,” the magazine said.

A heavy smoker and drinker, Hitchens cut short a book tour for his memoir Hitch 22 last year to undergo chemotherapy after being diagnosed with cancer.

As a journalist, war correspondent and literary critic, Hitchens carved out a reputation for barbed repartee, scathing critiques of public figures and a fierce intelligence.

In his 2007 book, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Hitchens took on major religions with his trenchant atheism.

The son of a British naval officer, Hitchens studied at Oxford University and worked as literary critic for the New Statesman magazine in London before moving to New York in 1981 to work as a journalist.

He settled in Washington the following year, initially as a correspondent for the left-wing magazine The Nation. He retained his British citizenship when he became an American citizen in 2007.

Hitchens was not one to mince words. In his book on Bill Clinton, No One Left To Lie To, he called the former US president a “rapist” and a “con man”.

He was the author of 25 books — including works on Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine and George Orwell.

Hitchens is survived by his wife Carol Blue, their daughter Antonia, and his children from a previous marriage, Alexander and Sophia, Vanity Fair said.

Booker prize-winning author Salman Rushdie paid tribute to Mr Hitchens.

“Goodbye, my beloved friend,” he wrote. “A great voice falls silent. A great heart stops.”

Writing on Twitter, the science writer Richard Dawkins said: “Christopher Hitchens, finest orator of our time, fellow horseman, valiant fighter against all tyrants, including God”.