Christopher Hitchens
Hitchens died of hospital-acquired pneumonia on 15 December 2011 in the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, aged 62. In accordance with his wishes, his body was donated to medical research. "Mortality", a collection of seven of Hitchen's "Vanity Fair" essays about his illness, was published posthumously in September 2012.
Christopher Hitchens
Hitchens went to the United States in 1981 as part of an editor exchange programme between the "New Statesman" and "The Nation". After joining "The Nation", he penned vociferous critiques of Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and American foreign policy in South and Central America. He became a contributing editor of "Vanity Fair" in 1992, writing ten columns a year. He left "The Nation" in 2002 after profoundly disagreeing with other contributors over the Iraq War. There is speculation that Hitchens was the inspiration for Tom Wolfe's character Peter Fallow in the 1987 novel "The Bonfire of the Vanities", but others—including Hitchens—believe it to be "Spy Magazine"s "Ironman Nightlife Decathlete", Anthony Haden-Guest. In 1987, Hitchens's father died from cancer of the oesophagus, the same disease that would later claim his own life. In April 2007, Hitchens became a US citizen; he later stated that he saw himself as Anglo-American.