By Lehan Ramsay

I figured that Christopher Hitchens felt a similar way about smoking and drinking that I did. That for all the threats about death and hideous illness, it wasn’t going to happen to those cool enough to stare death in the face. I figured that he was extremely embarrassed when he found out about his cancer. Here was the most embarrassing of demises for a chain-smoking boozer. And it wasn’t cool at all. So from the first announcement to the last, Christopher was stoic. I felt embarrassed for him, too.

I did find his speaking dazzling. But he annoyed me a lot. Sometimes, to be honest, I felt like answering one of his smug compact little word paintings with “nya nya nya nya nya”. He was a man who was at his best when you least knew him, I felt sorry for his family, not that he was likely to have talked to them, but who would have had to listen to his phone calls.

Still, in turning around the usual way of thinking and confounding his audience with something new, he was formidable. I hope they put a lot of cigarettes and alcohol into his coffin with him, he did good work on this earth, making people think.