Christopher Hitchens: The Last Interview

And Other Conversations

Christopher Hitchens

With an introduction by Stephen Fry

“If someone says I’m doing this out of faith, I say, Why don’t you do it out of conviction?” —Christopher Hitchens

One of his generation’s greatest public intellectuals, and perhaps its fiercest, Christopher Hitchens was a brilliant interview subject. This collection—which spans from his early prominence as a hero of the Left to his controversial support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan toward the end of his life—showcases Hitch’s trademark wit on subjects as diverse as his mistrust of the media, his love of literature, his dislike of the Clintons, and his condemnation of all things religious. Beginning with an introduction and tribute from his longtime friend Stephen Fry, this collection culminates in Hitchens’s final interview with Richard Dawkins, which shows a man as unafraid of death as he was of everything in life.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS was an English-born American writer, essayist, and journalist, as well as an outspoken atheist. He began his writing career in England as a correspondent for a socialist publication before writing for the New Statesman. He then moved to the US in 1981 and became an editor for The Nation. In 1992, he joined Vanity Fair as a contributing editor and he stayed with the publication for the remainder of his life. He also wrote a monthly column for The Atlantic, contributed regularly to the New York Review of Books, appeared as a talking head on countless television shows, and wrote or co-authored seventeen books. Hitchens also taught as a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley and a liberal studies professor at the New School. In 2010 he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, though this did not slow him down much as he continued to write and give interviews until he died on December 15, 2011.

“He’s one of the most terrifying rhetoricians that the world has yet seen.” —Martin Amis

“His unworldly fluency never deserted him, his commitment was passionate, and he never deserted his trade. He was the consummate writer, the brilliant friend. In Walter Pater’s famous phrase, he burned ‘with this hard gem-like flame.’ Right to the end.” —Ian McEwan

“He was an intellectual with the instincts of a street brawler, never happier than when engaged in moral or political fisticuffs.” —Salman Rushdie

“There was nothing that Hitch liked to do more than talk —and all the better if talking meant arguing.” —Anna Wintour