The Politics of Dancing

The death of any public figure impacts on the lives of millions of individuals, particularly a public intellectual of the stature of Christopher Hitchens, so I do not think it too presumptuous or overly solipsistic for me to reflect on the impact that he had on my own life. Though long expected, his death came as a sudden unpleasant reality; he is gone, though his presence remains like the ghostly rustling of the wind in the trees. I grew up in the shadow of giants, working class heroes like Jack Jones and Jimmy Reid, intellectuals like Michael Foot and Alan Taylor, with George Orwell always a constant presence in the background. I worried how my own generation would match up; well Christopher certainly stepped up to the mark. My own political journey over the last fifteen years or so has been sometimes little more than an ongoing engagement with The Hitch. Sometimes I disagreed, or winced at his tone, whilst he often made me feel uncomfortable as he excoriated the feebleness of m...

A few days ago a package arrived from Amazon containing a huge doorstop of a book, ‘ Arguably ,’ by Christopher Hitchens. Any new book by Hitchens is a treat, but this, meaty doesn’t quite do it justice, tome surpassed expectations, though I confess I received it with strong feelings of sadness, for ‘the Hitch’ is dying. News of his diagnosis with oesophageal cancer last year hit me as a form of personal tragedy, made all the more poignant by the timing of the news, just as I was finishing his autobiography Hitch 22. We needed the Hitch. I have tried to write about Christopher Hitchens before but gave up on every occasion, somehow I could never get the tone right, either too fawning or too coldly detached. Christopher Hitchens is not only the public intellectual for whom I have the greatest admiration but also someone who has time and time again warmed my spirit with his passion, commitment, pugnacity and his life affirming engagement with the enemies of free speech, democracy and ...