A Hitch in Time: Writings from the London Review of Books

Description

'Revisiting this selection of diaries and essay-reviews from the London Review of Books is restorative, an extended spa treatment that stretches tired brains and unkinks the usual habitual responses where Hitchens is concerned.' - James Wolcott in his introduction Christopher Hitchens was invariably a star writer everywhere he wrote, and the same was true of the London Review of Books, to which he contributed sixty pieces over two decades. Anthologised here for the first time, this selection of his finest LRB reviews, diaries and essays (along with a smattering of ferocious letters) finds Hitchens at his very best. Familiar betes noires - Kennedy, Nixon, Kissinger, Clinton - rub shoulders with lesser-known preoccupations: P.G. Wodehouse, Princess Margaret and, magisterially, Isaiah Berlin. Here is Hitchens on the (first) Gulf War and the 'Salman Rushdie Acid Test', on being spanked by Mrs Thatcher in the House of Lords and taking his son to the Oscars, on America's homegrown Nazis and 'Acts of Violence in Grosvenor Square' in 1968. Edited by the London Review of Books, with an introduction by James Wolcott, this collection recaptures, ten years after his death, 'a Hitch in time': barnstorming, cauterising, but ultimately uncontainable.

Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011) was a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and a columnist forSlate. He was the author of numerous books, including works on Thomas Jefferson, GeorgeOrwell, Mother Teresa, Henry Kissinger and Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as his internationalbestseller and National Book Award nominee, god Is Not Great. His memoir, Hitch-22, whichwas a Sunday Times bestseller, was nominated for the Orwell Prize and was a finalist for theNational Book Critics Circle Award. His last book, Mortality, was published in 2012 by AtlanticBooks.

And yet... there are few journalists who can match the verve and panache of Hitchens's prose. He mixes the loquaciousness of the barfly with the fluency of the literary artist, and could not pen a dull sentence if he tried. * Guardian on AND YET... * The range is remarkable... Literary criticism is often where he shines - the pieces on Orwell and Chesterton, in particular, are alert, nuanced and witty. * The Financial Times on AND YET * What you will find in And Yet..., is a body of work that offers some of the most various, nutritious and amusing prose you are likely to encounter, and that stands as a testament to the consolations of a phrase he cherished: litera scripta manet - the written word remains. * Daily Telegraph on AND YET... * A must-read for its laugh-out-loud consideration of Ian Fleming, alongside his thoughts on Charles Dickens, Salman Rushdie, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. How sad and dull it will be to follow the next American election without his coruscating commentary. * GQ on AND YET... *