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.
Unhitched (book)
Seymour assesses Hitchens' conversion from an opponent of neoconservatism to an Iraq War hawk, noting that he belongs to a "recognizable type: a left-wing defector with a soft spot for empire." For Seymour, Hitchens' conversion was the result of a perception of religion as a force for evil and an accompanying sense that the US empire could be a force for good. However, Seymour also traces the origins of Hitchens' neoconservatism to his earlier support for the US and for empires, including his support for the British government in the Falklands War and his view that the Roman conquest of Britain constituted "a huge advance". Seymour also considers Hitchens' reversal on the Bosnian War, his call for humanitarian intervention at the end of the Gulf War, his reverence for Rudyard Kipling and George Orwell, and his 2007 defence of the Tunisian government.