Authors: Christopher Hitchens
I
.âIt perhaps counts as an irony of British society that the little Oxfordshire churchyard in which Orwell was laid to rest, in the village of Sutton Courtenay, became also the “last resting place” of Margot Asquith's husband, the former prime minister and Earl of Oxford and Asquith. Equality between the one and the ninety-nine was attainable at least in death.
II
.âThis is a very acute register of what Orwell himself called “a power of facing unpleasant facts.” Netted in a world of lies, he wanted not to be spared the bad news or coddled by victory propaganda at his place of work. And he despised the alternative flow of information and insight, which was gossip and rumor. Like Winston Smith, he was first and foremost activated by a raging thirst to know: a thirst that could only be slaked by a personal quest for the least varnished version of the truth.
III
.âIt is from this poem of William Blake's that Orwell also claimed one of his favorite lines, and one of the clues to his personality: “A truth that's told with bad intent / Beats all the lies you can invent.”
IV
.âIt deserves to be said that Orwell went on to write several analyses and condemnations of anti-Semitism and to attack contemporary writers like G. K. Chesterton who exploited it in their work. Among his colleagues and friends at the socialist weekly
Tribune
he numbered two Jewish colleagues, Jon Kimche and T. R. “Tosco” Fyvel. Not to recycle any corny allusion to “some of my best friends,” but Fyvel regarded Orwell as free from prejudice and even as having been slightly prescient in his misgivings about Zionism, then a popular cause on the left. (Orwell thought that even if it were a just cause it would necessitate a garrison state to defend itself against the rival nationalism that it had defeated.)
P
ATRIOTIC AND TRIBAL
feelings belong to the squalling childhood of the human race, and become no more charming in their senescence. They are particularly unattractive when evinced by a superpower. But ironies of history may yet save us. English language and literature, oft-celebrated as one of the glories of “Western” and even “Christian” civilization, turn out to have even higher faculties than used to be claimed for them. In my country of birth the great new fictional practitioners have in their front rank names like Rushdie, Ishiguro, Kureishi, Mo. This attainment on their part makes me oddly proud to be whatever I am, and convinces me that internationalism is the highest form of patriotism.
(
The Nation
, July 15/22, 1991)
Christopher Hitchens
was born April 13, 1949, in England and graduated from Balliol College at Oxford University. The father of three children, he was the author of more than twenty books and pamphlets, including collections of essays, criticism, and reportage. His book
god Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
was a finalist for the 2007 National Book Award and an international bestseller. His bestselling memoir,
Hitch-22
, was a finalist for the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography. His 2011 bestselling omnibus of selected essays,
Arguably
, was named by the
New York Times
as one of the ten best books of the year. A visiting professor of liberal studies at the New School in New York City, he was also the I. F. Stone professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. He was a columnist, literary critic, and contributing editor at
Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, Slate, The Times Literary Supplement, The Nation, New Statesman, World Affairs
, and
Free Inquiry
, among other publications. He died in Houston on December 15, 2011. The following year, Yoko Ono awarded him the Lennon-Ono Grant for Peace.
MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT
authors.simonandschuster.com/Christopher-Hitchens
ALSO BY CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
BOOKS
Hostage to History: Cyprus from the Ottomans to Kissinger
Blood, Class, and Nostalgia: Anglo-American Ironies
Imperial Spoils: The Curious Case of the Elgin Marbles
Why Orwell Matters
No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton
Letters to a Young Contrarian
The Trial of Henry Kissinger
Thomas Jefferson: Author of America
Thomas Paine's “Rights of Man”: A Biography
god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever
Hitch-22: A Memoir
Mortality
PAMPHLETS
Karl Marx and the Paris Commune
The Monarchy: A Critique of Britain's Favorite Fetish
The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice
A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq
ESSAYS
Prepared for the Worst: Selected Essays and Minority Reports
For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports
Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere
Love, Poverty and War: Journeys and Essays
Arguably: Essays
COLLABORATIONS
Callaghan: The Road to Number Ten
(with Peter Kellner)
Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question
(with Edward Said)
When the Borders Bleed: The Struggle of the Kurds
(photographs by Ed Kashi)
International Territory: The United Nations, 1945â95
(photographs by Adam Bartos)
Vanity Fair's Hollywood
(with Graydon Carter and David Friend)
Left Hooks, Right Crosses: A Decade of Political Writing
(edited with Christopher Caldwell)
Is Christianity Good for the World?
(with Douglas Wilson)
Hitchens vs. Blair: The Munk Debate on Religion
(edited by Rudyard Griffiths)
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A note about the index:
The pages referenced in this index refer to the page numbers in the print edition. Clicking on a page number will take you to the ebook location that corresponds to the beginning of that page in the print edition. For a comprehensive list of locations of any word or phrase, use your reading system's search function.
Note: Page numbers in
boldface
indicate the subjects of reviews or prose pieces.
absolutism,
273
Abu Ghraib prison,
258
Acropolis Museum,
240
â42
Acropolis Restoration Service,
235
Adamic, Louis,
26
Adams, John,
44
Adler, Georg, et al., eds.,
The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg,
273
â79
Afghanistan, war in,
119
â20
“After Strange Gods” (Eliot),
80
After the Victorians: The Decline of Britain in the World
(Wilson),
91
â96
Age of Jackson, The
(Schlesinger),
202
Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud,
248
,
249
,
265
AIDS,
252
Akçam, Taner,
35
Akhmatova, Anna,
150
Alamo,
80
Albright, Madeleine,
255
Alexander the Great,
3
“ââAlimentary, Dr. Leiter': Anal Anxiety in
Diamonds Are Forever
” (Allen),
97
â98
Allen, Dennis W., “ââAlimentary, Dr. Leiter': Anal Anxiety in
Diamonds Are Forever
,”
97
â98
Allen, George,
75
Allingham, Margery,
167
All the Year Round,
291
â92
Altenberg, Peter,
150
Alter, Victor,
22
Alteration, The
(Amis),
307
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU),
106
,
110
,
112
,
226
American Enterprise Institute,
194
American Nazi Party,
110
American Notes for General Circulation
(Dickens),
297
American Revolution,
55
Americans for Democratic Action (ADA),
116
,
118
,
120
Amis, Kingsley
The Alteration,
307
The James Bond Dossier,
98
Amristar massacre (1919),
93
,
206
Anderson, John,
200
Anderson, Jon Lee,
Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life,
1
â18
Anderson, Perry,
279
English Questions,
27
Andress, Ursula,
99
Angola, Cuban expedition to,
6
Antaeus (Greek legend),
267
â68
Anti-Defamation League (ADL),
124
â25
Antigone
(Sophocles),
237
Anti-Suffrage League,
154
Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (1996),
112
,
226
Aplin, Hugh, transl.,
A Hero of Our Time
(Lermontov),
57
,
62
Area of Darkness, An
(Naipaul),
221
Armas, Castillo,
9
Armenia,
261
â64
Armey, Dick,
271
Armitage, Richard,
256
Aron, Raymond,
148
Ashe, Arthur,
73
Assad, Bashar,
266
Assad, Hafez al-,
128
Astor, Nancy,
93
As You Like It
(Shakespeare),
275
â76
Atatürk, Kemal,
34
â35,
36
â37
Atlantic, The
“A. N. Wilson: Downhill All the Way” (January/February 2006),
91
â96
“Arthur Schlesinger: The Courier” (December 2007),
197
â202
“Barack Obama: Cool Cat” (January/February 2009),
229
â34
“Blood for No Oil!” (May 2006),
115
â21
“Clive James: The Omnivore” (April 2007),
147
â51
“Edmund Wilson: Literary Companion” (September 2007),
163
â68