Christopher Hitchens, hangman, Heller and Hay

My last sight of Christopher Hitchens at a public meeting was during the Hay Festival a decade ago when, slowly, deliberately and very visibly he staged a one-man walk out during the foreign policy section of a speech by Bill Clinton.

My first ever sight of Christopher Hitchens (in public or in private) was at the Oxford Union four decades ago when he led  a noose-wielding attack on the lesser figure of the British Foreign Secretary Michael Stewart, deemed then to be excessively uncritical of US behaviour in Vietnam.

This first sighting is recalled in my review  of Hitch 22, published today on the excellent Truthdig site along with a few Hitchenesque thoughts on the KIng of China, a tight vagina and the prose style of George Steiner.

The second, the long slow walk-out, will not, I am sure, be repeated when I'm interviewing the author at Hay on Sunday night - after my morning  On the Spartacus Road event with Charlotte Higgins.

But if anyone at Hay sees a grey-haired, square-faced former President queuing with a ticket for 'Hitchens in Conversation', it might be wise to let him sit at the end of the row.

Comments

[Candadai Tirumalai]

Christopher Hitchens is a leading "enfant terrible" of our time, with a quite original capacity to infuriate as well as to provoke thought. In addition he is a transatlantic phenomenon.

[Susan Hill]

Christopher Hitchens reminds me of no one so much as St Paul. At the moment he is still Saul but if he were ever to have a Damescene conversion he'd be as powerful ally for Christianity as Paul ever was - all that anger, passion, intelligence and conviction would do our side a power of good. Every time I read Paul I think of him as a former-day CH. I`m praying about it.