Death of Christopher Hitchens

A writer who sits alongside Orwell and Voltaire, of erudite wit; an awesome intellect with the power to change and galvanize minds with a phrase; a man of steadfast principle who would, with great heart, stand up for all that is good and honest and fair in the face of all mainstream opinion and danger; with a library of resources in his mind ready to take on, with vigour, even the most omniscient of tyrants and to point the finger at the most falsely regarded fraud. To read Hitchens is to read a literary leader, one who will so often be referred back to in my quotations; he has fallen at the only battle lost, the one which cruelly cut short his life.