Christopher Hitchens has died.
Author Christopher Hitchens has died of cancer at the age of 62,Vanity Fair has reported.
The magazine said he died today after being diagnosed with oesophageal cancer last year while on a book tour for his memoir “Hitch-22″.
Vanity Fair’s website reported that he died at the MD Anderson Cancer Centre in Houston, Texas, surrounded by friends, whom he described earlier this year as “my chief consolation in this year of living dyingly” after writing last year that “cancer victimhood contains a permanent temptation to be self-centered and even solipsistic”.
Hitchens was known for his heroic intake of alcohol and cigarettes. He wrote in 2003 that his daily intake of alcohol was enough to “stun the average mule”.
He said he had given up smoking in 2008, but journalist and author Peter FitzSimons, who interviewed him for his appearance the 2010 Sydney Writers’ Festival, said Hitchens had been still smoking as of last year.
Hitchens was a columnist for Vanity Fair and Slate, the online magazine, and the author of the New York Times bestselling book God is Not Great.
I don’t subscribe to Hitchens’ views on religion or God. However he was a great intellect and he is now gone. As an antitheist and atheist he is now…well…at an end.
