Lady Thatcher got a drubbing in some quarters but spare a thought for Christopher Hitchens. His legacy was torn apart in the last issue of GQ by Michael Wolff, who said the late Hitchens had “the appeal more of a Fox News personality than of an essayist dwelling in the grey areas”.
Now Julian Barnes has waded in. The Booker-winning novelist recounts in today’s New Statesman how the young Hitchens “was largely gay, idly anti-Semitic and very Left-wing; I think he was still a member of the IS [the International Socialists].
“Then ripple-dissolve to someone who was twice married and had discovered himself to be Jewish and become a neocon. An odd progress, though he didn’t do the traditional shuffle to the Right; he kept one left, liberal leg planted where it always had been and made a huge, corkscrewing leap with his right leg. I enjoyed his company but never entirely trusted him.” Elegantly demolished.
