Christopher Hitchens, Esteemed Writer, Dead at 62

By Lucas Shaw at TheWrap - Reuters - Fri Dec 16, 2011 

Christopher Hitchens, esteemed British essayist, author and journalist, died on Thursday of complications from esophageal cancer. He was 62.

Hitchens, who wrote for publications such as The Atlantic Monthly, Slate and Vanity Fair, rose to prominence for his divisive opinions, his unabashed atheism, his scorching critiques of popular figures like Mother Teresa Henry Kissinger, and, above all, his razor wit.
Hitchens’ battle with cancer was well known from his own public statements and writings, and Vanity Fair, where Hitchens was a columnist, released a statement on Thursday to say that he had died at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
“There will never be another like Christopher,” Vanity Fair Graydon Carter said in the statement. “A man of ferocious intellect, who was as vibrant on the page as he was at the bar. Those who read him felt they knew him, and those who knew him were profoundly fortunate souls.”
Hitchens, the author of more than a dozen books, was born in Portsmouth, England on April 13, 1949. He attended Oxford University and in his early life was a Tortskyist socialist, beginning his journalistic career at the radical International Socialism before moving on to the left-leaning The New Statesman.
Hitchens emigrated to the United States in 1981, where he began to work for The Nation, a liberal weekly magazine home to the likes of Gore Vidal. He took on popular political figures such as President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George H.W. Bush, but would soon begin to shift his views as his concerns about radical Islam grew.
He began writing for Vanity Fair in 1992, where he has written regular columns ever since. He soon became a vocal critic of Bill Clinton and by September 11, his swing to the right side of the spectrum was complete. He became one of the staunchest supporters of the war in Iraq.
He later admitted to voting for Obama and his views on religion – he penned a book in 2007 titled “God is Not Great” – certainly differentiated him from most American conservatives.
He is survived by his second wife Carol Blue


And:
Polemicist Who Slashed All, Freely, With Wit  - New York Times
At The Guardian.
The Daily Beast
Vanity Fair
The Telegraph