Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Eric Hitchens (13th April 1949 - 15th December 2011) was a British-born Anglo-American author, journalist and literary critic. He is perhaps best known for his writings on religion and atheism, but was also known as a defender of the reasons behind the Iraq War. He also strongly criticised various public figures during his lifetime, notably Mother Teresa, and participated in many public debates on the nature of religion, advancing the case for antitheism.

One of Hitchens's best-known works is God Is Not Great: How Religions Poisons Everything (2007), but he also published shorter works on literature and commentaries on the works of other writers, including George Orwell. He was a contributing editor to Vanity Fair, a columnist for The Atlantic, and sat on the advisory board of the Secular Coalition for America.

In 2007, Hitchens became a US citizen but retained his British nationality. In 2010, he published his autobiography, Hitch-22, the same year that he was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer. Hitchens wrote extensively on his experience of terminal cancer until his death in December 2011 from complications brought on by the disease.