Hitch 22: A Memoir - Hardcover

"'If Hitchens didn't exist, we wouldn't be able to invent him.' Ian McEwan 'Razor-sharp... Outstanding' A.C. Grayling, Independent on Sunday 'Thank God for Christopher Hitchens.' Mark Warren, Esquire 'A grand rhetorician' Christopher Hart, Sunday Times 'One of the most formidable polemicists writing in English today.' John Cornwell, The Tablet 'If you are... invited to debate with Christopher Hitchens, decline. His witty repartee, his ready-access store of historical quotations, his bookish eloquence, his effortless flow of well-formed words... would threaten your arguments even if you had good ones to deploy.' Richard Dawkins, TLS"

Over the last thirty years, Christopher Hitchens has established himself as one of the world's most influential public intellectuals. His originality, bravery, range, and wit made him first a leading iconoclast of the political left and then, later in his career, a formidable advocate of secular liberalism. When the Twin Towers were attacked in September 2001, Hitchens was re-energised again, quickly emerging as one of the fiercest and most influential advocates of war on Iraq. In this long-awaited and candid memoir, Hitchens re-traces the footsteps of his life to date, from his childhood in Portsmouth, with his adoring, tragic mother and reserved Naval officer father; to his life in Washington DC, the base from which from he would launch fierce attacks on tyranny of all kinds. Along the way, he recalls the girls, boys and booze; the friendships and the feuds; the grand struggles and lost causes; and the mistakes and misgivings that have characterised his life. Hitch-22 is, by turns, moving and funny, charming and infuriating, enraging and inspiring. It is an indispensable companion to the life and thought of our pre-eminent political writer.