A Hitch in Time: Writings from the London Review of Books

Description

Christopher Hitchens was a star writer wherever he wrote, and the same was true of the London Review of Books, to which he contributed sixty pieces over two decades. Anthologised here for the first time, this selection of his finest LRB reviews, diaries and essays (along with a smattering of ferocious letters) finds Hitchens at his very best. Familiar bêtes noires – Kennedy, Nixon, Kissinger, Clinton – rub shoulders with lesser-known preoccupations: P.G. Wodehouse, Princess Margaret and, magisterially, Isaiah Berlin. Here is Hitchens on the (first) Gulf War and the ‘Salman Rushdie Acid Test’, on being spanked by Mrs Thatcher in the House of Lords and taking his son to the Oscars, on America’s homegrown Nazis and ‘Acts of Violence in Grosvenor Square’ in 1968. Edited by the London Review of Books, with an introduction by James Wolcott, this collection recaptures, ten years after his death, ‘a Hitch in time’: barnstorming, cauterising, and ultimately uncontainable. Introduction The Wrong Stuff: On Tom Wolfe (1983) Diary: Operation Desert Storm (1991) Oh, Lionel!: On P. G. Wodehouse (1992) Mary, Mary: On J. Edgar Hoover (1993) Say what you will about Harold: On Harold Wilson (1993) Diary: The Salman Rushdie Acid Test (1994) Diary: Spanking (1994) Who Runs Britain?: Police Espionage (1994) Lucky Kim: On Kim Philby (1995) Diary: At the Oscars (1995) Look over your shoulder: The Oklahoma Bombing (1995) Letters After-Time: On Gore Vidal (1995) A Hard Dog to Keep on the Porch: On Bill Clinton (1996) The Trouble with HRH: On Princess Margaret (1997) Brief Shining Moments: Kennedy and Nixon (1998) Letters Acts of Violence in Grosvenor Square: On 1968 (1998) Diary: The ‘Almanach de Gotha’ (1998) Moderation or Death: On Isaiah Berlin (1998) Letters What a Lot of Parties: On Diana Mosley (1999) 11 September 1973: Pinochet and Britain (2002)