Tributes pour in for journalist and atheist Christopher Hitchens

Dec 16, 2011, 13:12 GMT

New York - Tributes poured in Friday for British-born journalist and prominent atheist Christopher Hitchens, who has died of cancer at the age of 62.

'Christopher Hitchens was a wit, a charmer and a troublemaker, and to those who knew him well, he was a gift from, dare I say, God,' wrote Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair, where Hitchens was a contributing editor.

Hitchens was famous for his scathing critiques of everyone from politicians to Nobel prize winners and as a devout atheist gleefully picked fights with believers of all faiths, notably calling Mother Teresa 'a lying, thieving Albanian dwarf.'

'I loved & prayed for him constantly & grieve his loss. He knows the Truth now,' American pastor Rick Warren, who delivered the invocation at US President Barack Obama's inauguration, wrote on the internet messaging service Twitter.

'Christopher Hitchens, finest orator of our time, fellow horseman, valiant fighter against all tyrants including God,' wrote science writer Richard Dawkins.

Hitchens was diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus last year and died late Thursday at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas with his friends at his bedside.

He was an 'incomparable critic, masterful rhetorician, fiery wit, and fearless bon vivant' who would be dearly missed, Vanity Fair wrote.

After the 2007 publication of God Is Not Great, a manifesto for atheists, Hitchens became a major celebrity in the United States, his adopted homeland.

He remained a staunch atheist after his cancer diagnosis, telling one interviewer: 'No evidence or argument has yet been presented which would change my mind. But I like surprises.'

He was born in 1949 in the southern coastal town of Portsmouth and educated at Oxford University. His father was a naval officer and his mother a romantic who killed herself during an extramarital rendezvous in Greece.

At Oxford, Hitchens became a left-wing radical, arrested at political rallies and kicked out of the Labour Party for his opposition to the Vietnam War.

But he enjoyed the good life, drinking enough 'to kill or stun the average mule' and mixing with the great and the good of Oxford.

After university he worked for left-wing magazine the New Statesman, where he met fellow authors and long-time friends Martin Amis and Ian McEwan.

However, he later feuded with liberals too, angering them by arguing that a child's life begins at conception as well as producing essays such as 'Why Women Aren't Funny' for Vanity Fair.

He blasted former US president Bill Clinton, saying he was 'hateful in his behaviour to women, pathological as a liar, and deeply suspect when it came to money in politics.'

His retreat from leftist politics was completed after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, when he supported the invasion of Iraq, backed president George Bush for reelection in 2004 and repeatedly scolded those he believed were too considerate toward the feelings of Muslims.

One memorable quote included: 'Cluster bombs are perhaps not good in themselves, but when they are dropped on identifiable concentrations of Taliban troops, they do have a heartening effect.'

He is survived by his second wife author Carol Blue and three children.

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