British Author Christopher Hitchens Dies

British author and literary critic Christopher Hitchens has died aged 62 after a battle with cancer.

The prolific and controversial writer, who had lived in America for many years, died with friends at his bedside at the MD Anderson Cancer Centre in Houston, Texas.

Mr Hitchens was having chemotherapy treatment for throat cancer which had been detected last year.

In an interview in November 2010, he said the cancer had spread to his lymph nodes and was possibly brought on by his "bohemian and rackety life".

Born in 1949, the English-American citizen's father also died of the same oesophageal cancer.

The magazine Vanity Fair dedicated a page to the writer who had been a contributing editor.

Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter remembered him as: "A brilliant wit, matchless rhetorician, and masterful critic.

"He was a man of insatiable appetites - for cigarettes, for scotch, for company, for great writing, and, above all, for conversation.

"That he had an output to equal what he took in was the miracle in the man."

Carter added: "You'd be hard-pressed to find a writer who could match the volume of exquisitely-crafted columns, essays, articles and books he produced over the past four decades.

"Christopher was the beau ideal of the public intellectual. You felt as though he was writing to you and to you alone. And, as a result, many readers felt they knew him.

"Walking with him down the street in New York or through an airplane terminal was like escorting a movie star through the throngs."

Writer Tony Parsons said: "Christopher Hitchens was a one-off, a trouble maker, one of the greatest writers alive and also a smoker. He deserved 30 more years of life."

Richard Dawkins wrote of his friend and fellow aetheist: "Christopher Hitchens, finest orator of our time, fellow horseman, valiant fighter against all tyrants including God."

Mr Hitchens last interview was with Dawkins recently for the New Statesman.

He was in demand as a commentator on the US chat show circuit, known for his railings against the Royal family, the Clinton presidency - he referred to Mother Teresa as "a lying, thieving Albanian dwarf".

In 2010 he wrote of Prince Charles: "We have known for a long time that Prince Charles' empty sails are so rigged as to be swelled by any passing waft or breeze of crankiness and cant."

The writer and literary critic published his memoir Hitch-22 last year and, as an outspoken atheist, he argued the existence of a God with former prime minister Tony Blair.

At the televised debate in Canada November 2010, he said religion was like a "celestial dictatorship, a kind of divine North Korea".

Tony Blair paid tribute to his adversary today saying: "Christopher Hitchens was a complete one-off, an amazing mixture of writer, journalist, polemicist, and unique character.

"He was fearless in the pursuit of truth and any cause in which he believed. And there was no belief he held, that he did not advocate with passion, commitment and brilliance.

"He was an extraordinary, compelling and colourful human being whom it was a privilege to know."