'Revisiting this selection of diaries and essay-reviews from the London Review of Books is restorative, an extended spa treatment that stretches tired brains and unkinks the usual habitual responses where Hitchens is concerned.' James Wolcott in his introduction Christopher Hitchens was a star writer wherever he wrote, and the same was true of the London Review of Books, to which he contributed sixty pieces over two decades. Anthologised here for the first time, this selection of his finest LRB reviews, diaries and essays (along with a smattering of ferocious letters) finds Hitchens at his very best. Familiar bêtes noires - Kennedy, Nixon, Kissinger, Clinton - rub shoulders with lesser-known preoccupations: P.G. Wodehouse, Princess Margaret and, magisterially, Isaiah Berlin. Here is Hitchens on the (first) Gulf War and the 'Salman Rushdie Acid Test', on being spanked by Mrs Thatcher in the House of Lords and taking his son to the Oscars, on America's homegrown Nazis and 'Acts of Violence in Grosvenor Square' in 1968. Edited by the London Review of Books, with an introduction by James Wolcott, this collection recaptures, ten years after his death, 'a Hitch in time': barnstorming, cauterising, and ultimately uncontainable.

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Index
Abbasi, Mohammed Altaf, 101
Acton, John Dalberg-Acton, 1st
Baron, 264, 266
Adams, Clover, 149
Adams, Henry, 149, 150
Adorno, Theodor, 128, 135
Airlie, Mabell Ogilvy, Countess, 193
Akhmatova, Anna, 293–6
Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence, 193
Algeria, 74, 77, 235, 275
Ali, Tariq, 232, 233, 234
Alice of Battenberg, Princess, 197
Allen, Alice Warfield, 149
Allende, Salvador, 315–28
Aller, Frank, 166
Alsop, Joseph, 253–5, 257
Altman, Robert, 129
Amis, Martin, 7, 10, 192, 302
Anderson, Perry, 267
Angleton, James Jesus, 50, 66, 111
Arafat, Yasser, 74, 286
Arblaster, Anthony, 265–6
Archer, Peter, 103
Arendt, Hannah, 277
Arnett, Peter, 29
Aronson, Theodore, 193–4, 196, 198
Aspin, Leslie, 171
Ataturk, Kemal, 29–30, 72
Attlee, Clement, 57–8, 61, 311–12
Aubrey, Crispin, 97
Auchincloss, Hugh, 154–5, 158, 161–2
Auden, Wystan Hugh, 108, 140, 205, 238
Austen, Howard, 149, 159
al-Azm, Sadik, 76
Bagehot, Walter, 192
Baker, James, 180
Baker, Robert ‘Bobby’, 168, 173
Baker, Russell, 123
Baldwin, James, 161
Balfour, Arthur, 282, 285
Barnes, Julian, 73, 126, 299, 301–2
Barrett, Victoria, 88
Beckett, Andy, 315–28
Begin, Menachem, 284
Being There, 124
Bell Curve, The (Charles A. Murray and Richard Herrnstein), 111, 13...
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- Contents
- Introduction by James Wolcott
- The Wrong Stuff: On Tom Wolfe, 1983
- Diary: Operation Desert Storm, 1991
- Oh, Lionel! On P.G. Wodehouse, 1992
- Mary, Mary: On J. Edgar Hoover, 1993
- Say what you will about Harold: On Harold Wilson, 1993
- Diary: The Salman Rushdie Acid Test, 1994
- Diary: Spanking, 1994
- Who Runs Britain? Police Espionage, 1994
- Lucky Kim: On Kim Philby, 1995
- Diary: At the Oscars, 1995
- Look over your shoulder: The Oklahoma Bombing, 1995
- Letters: Richard Cummings, Christopher Hitchens
- After-Time: On Gore Vidal, 1995
- A Hard Dog to Keep on the Porch: On Bill Clinton, 1996
- The Trouble with HRH: On Princess Margaret, 1997
- Brief Shining Moments: Kennedy and Nixon, 1998
- Letters: Arthur Schlesinger Jr, Christopher Hitchens, Mervyn Jones
- Acts of Violence in Grosvenor Square: On 1968, 1998
- Diary: The ‘Almanach de Gotha’, 1998
- Moderation or Death: On Isaiah Berlin, 1998
- Letters: Roger Scruton, Francis Wheen, Mark Lilly, Christopher Hitchens
- What a Lot of Parties: On Diana Mosley
- 11 September 1973: Pinochet and Britain
- Index
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