Hostage to History

He is a British-American author, columnist, essayist, orator, literary and religious critic, social critic and journalist. Hitchens was the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of more than 30 books, including five collections of political, cultural, and literary essays. His polemical rhetoric made him a central topic of public discourse, resulting in him as an intellectual and controversial figure. Contributed to New Statesman, The Nation, The Weekly Standard, The Atlantic, London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, Slate, Free Inquiry, and Vanity Fair. Describing himself as a democratic socialist, Marxist and anti-totalitarian, he broke with the political left after describing it as the "lukewarm reaction" of the Western left to the debate over The Satanic Verses, followed by the left's embrace of Bill Clinton and the anti-NATO war movement in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s.

The last century. His support for the war on Iraq further separated him. His writings included criticism of public figures such as Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, Mother Teresa and Diana, Princess of Wales. He was the older brother of conservative journalist and author Peter Hitchens. He also called for the separation of church and state. As a critic of divinity, he regards notions of a deity or a higher power as universalistic beliefs that restrict individual freedom. He advocated freedom of expression and scientific discovery, and that it trumps religion as a moral code of conduct for human civilization. His famous statement, "What can be affirmed without evidence can be denied without evidence" became known as the Hitchens Code.