Reading Hitchens

John Gray reviews Arguably:

That Hitchens has the mind of a believer has not been sufficiently appreciated. His critics usually fasten on secondary features of his work, quite often those that make reading him so enjoyable. It may be true that he is a bit of a name-dropper, and yet the conversations he recounts are never reported for effect; they are absorbingly interesting in their own right. It is true that there is something indescribably English in his style of writing - though why this should be a fault is not clear.

Reading Hitchens, one cannot help thinking of the combative and unsparing wit on display in Claud Cockburn's journalism; but, by any reasonable assessment, Hitchens is a far more substantial figure. To fasten on his role as a celebrity journalist (as many of his critics have done) is to underestimate his achievements, because, when he leaves behind the certainties of ideology, he is an incomparable truth-teller. 

(Image: "The author at home in Washington, D.C., July 18, 2010," by John Huba, published in Vanity Fair)