Stephen Fry & Friends on the Life of Christopher Hitchens

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, good evening and welcome to what I hope will be an extraordinary and very surprising evening even though it naturally started on a disappointing note and that is that Krista is not physically with us. She would be pleased to know. He is actually watching this event and will be very happy to listen to you, his wife Carol and one of his great

friends

, Ian McEwan, the novelist, among his many characteristics, one of them being a genius for

friends

hip, as we will discover, but I. I'm delighted to welcome you all to the Royal Festival of Southbank Centres.

Oh yes, they will be. I'll tell you who you'll hear from, and you won't be surprised if you know something about Christopher. Martin will tell you. From Amos, you will hear, yes, the man himself, you will hear from Christopher Buckley, from James Fenton, from Salman Rushdie and here in this theater I will be speaking with Professor Emeritus Richard Dawkins and that is very exciting in the last minute edition, a extraordinary man. a remarkable artist, an extraordinary actor who is a big fan of Christopher, as I can tell everyone in this room, and we hope, through the Google+ Hangout, to have a conversation with Sean Penn, so first of all I just have a few words To say about Christopher Eric Hitchens, yes, his middle name really is Eric, maybe he was called a comedian now, but it was his father's name and B, of course, was the name of a writer, polemicist, essayist and political thinker about whom Christopher wrote a book and who can write the claim of descent and influenced Eric Blair his pseudonym of course was George Orwell, you can call Christopher Hitch, you can call him by age, you can address him as mr.

Hitchens or Christopher, but if you want to escape his presence unscathed, don't even think about calling him Chris. I have to explain why I am here. Why did I present this afternoon and that night during which Christopher and I were scheduled to shoot the breeze? He in Washington DC and I here. I cannot pretend to call him a friend with the depth of meaning that several of the people were going to hear tonight, but I can at least claim the privilege of having debated with him at his side pay why and here in London for intelligence squared and I can affirm that we call ourselves an old horse like Stanley Ukridge or an old bun like Barney Phipps or Oofy Prosser because we share a love and a great passion for the works of P G Woodhouse and things like that form a bond, the first thing I want to disabuse you of is the notion that Christopher is a serious and humorless politician and, after the self-righteous figure he sometimes paints, has fought for all kinds of causes throughout his career.

In his

life

he faced bullies, his indignation against those who assumed he was a natural ally. He has poured all of his energies, talents and enthusiasms in a thousand directions, but always with wit, panache, a sumptuously exquisite use of language and a deep understanding of that connection. between style and substance is absolute a poorly expressed truth is a lie Christopher has opened the debate he has given voice to ideas and causes that without his talent would have been less aired and less understood he has done so from a position of learning and understanding that earns praise no matter how unloved and neglected he is in the Anglo-Saxon nations of intellectuals like me, he is Jewish on his mother's side, the side that counts as me, he is busy and productive, but unlike me, he is not a miser, they I appreciate that applause.

To say that I am actually quite expensive and I like to think that I am a good boy because I kiss, but I am. I'm out of Christopher's major league, almost everyone's It's no coincidence that the great associations in his

life

that he was at the absolute center of one of the tightest and most talented circles of friends in British cultural life in the last 50 years, who are distinguished not only by their supreme intelligence, their quickness of wit, their variety of learning and breadth of knowledge, but also simply, at the level of the sentence, by their miraculous ability to put one word after another at the service of poetry, essay, novel, criticism, history or political diatribe, without a doubt, he was a committed traveler, a protester, a pamphleteer, a propagandist of the extreme left, a Trotskyist, an international brigadier of the old school traveling from Cyprus to Cambodia from Cuba to Paris Hassan wetab a dissident and descendant of a hard-left and old-fashioned vulture sir, somehow Christopher has emerged.

I once said that the most important member of that group would be somewhat pointless and pointless to say the least, but as a very, very surprisingly influential and important figure of our times, he has become, in the words of Willy Loman, someone of a sort of sacred cows like Mother Teresa, Princess Diana, and has horrified many of her seemingly natural left-liberal allies with her attacks on Clinton, her fervent support for the war in Iraq, and has risen to the top of many little black books. of revenge thanks to his brave attacks against the religious, the sellers of spiritual snake oil, the established churches, but he has undoubtedly risen to a point of fame, adulation and attention that I think no one has surprised more than himself, as well that what we are here perhaps more than anything to celebrate is that someone in this cultural desert of celebrity worship, anti-Enlightenment malice, and the revealed tyranny of Scripture, someone has proven that there are still people in this world, especially among young people. intelligent and curious, a furious appetite for ideas, knowledge, thought and questioning authority, to be in the word, from one of his best books, a contrary in that sense, Christopher Hitchens can read could be described as a hero who is not of the left or the neoconservative right, not of libertarianism or liberal humanism, but a hero of the mind, but he is certainly my hero and thanks to technology we will now be able to listen.

I hope I can hear from others who would care and so I'll go and sit in that chair and pray that the power of Google has allowed a miracle to happen so watch me pay mm-hmm oh look there's Sean Hooray Sean Penn, welcome and thank you very much for joining us. you hear clearly, yes, fantastic. I know it's morning in Los Angeles where you are and as you know it's late and night is approaching in London and I know you greatly admire Christopher Chin and there are many reasons why one could and I believe. I think one of the reasons you admire Amis is because of the extraordinary ferocity and ultimately validated truth of his attack on one of the most powerful men in American history, Henry Kissinger.

That's how you first met Christopher. As a debater who attacked Kissinger, yes, it was his book, The Son of Henry Kissinger, that really focused my attention on his work and then was followed also by a kind of Magnificent Magnificence of His Language that I think was particularly inspiring to those of us. in America who have underestimated him and then the clarity of his thinking I think made him a particularly sharp knife in the cut of Kissinger, who I think the original title of the book and Chris's mine was Henry's Portrait of a Murderer in series that was not appreciated. publishing, but I think what Kissinger was dealing with with Christopher Hitchens was someone who wasn't distracted by Kissinger's intelligence or his articulation, his Kris could more than match it and had a clarity of a kind of pure, unfettered morality that I saw what Kissinger's motivations were unequivocally, yes, and of course Kissinger tried to sue Christopher, right?

And which, by the way, we are so happy to see smoking, the way it is, it is a magnificent sight, it would be much less shocking to most. audience if you stick your penis out on stage, so congratulations for doing that and Christopher is more than a rhetorician, he has to do that and this is one of the reasons I admire myself, he has to do that thing called work where you really have to do it. find out the facts you have to get everywhere and you have to get them right because the cost of being wrong is enormous, especially in America, it's a lawsuit, it's a lawsuit that can ruin you and Christopher's side that maybe people does not understand. because it is the side that you naturally never see, see, see, the famous slightly wobbly drinker and smoker who graced so many platforms and made so many debates and and what is so extraordinary in his ability to speak perfectly without notes was absolutely unbeatable in debate. possibly the greatest debater since Demosthenes and what they don't see is the man alone in his library or the man who searches for sources, the man who makes sure that every word he writes is not only beautifully written but also beautifully researched and it is for That is why Books like Kissinger's book still deserve to be read again and again because they are indisputable among the reasons for which he is known.

There is one that perhaps comes more easily to people's lips and that is, if you like it, they noticed it. Before many of us did, the tide of Enlightenment was receding quite deliberately and that is why he is well known, among other things, because he is extraordinary, but God is not great, our religion poisons everything and perhaps the better known is even better known than Christopher. for such a thing is the emeritus professor of understanding science at the University of Oxford, who let us not forget, is one of the great evolutionary biologists of today and I am about to introduce him on stage now, Professor Richard Dawkins, the most advanced piece of pen.

Well, Richard, in one sense it would be fair to say that your anger at religion is not so much the root cause of your life, but that you simply found that it was getting in the way of a free, free-thinking education. Yes, I think my Anger probably like Christopher's is somewhat exaggerated and it's exaggerated because people who are very devout to religion when they hear any kind of criticism, no matter how mild, they think it's angry. I think the reason is that they're not so used to it that even if the criticism is relatively mild, criticism that would sound mild if it were a criticism of a play or a restaurant or something like that if it's religion it sounds angry so I think it's exaggerated I mean to the extent that I am angry I think that possibly my anger would be slightly different from Christopher in the sense that I suppose he is angry because he sees the tyrannical figure of God as a kind of dictator, a kind of terror figure of North Korea.

I guess, whereas in my case I think it's educational. I feel like the subversion of young minds by teaching them the second-rate explanation for the existence of themselves and the universe as opposed to the real one, since the real one is so captivating and fascinating that it is so vulgar and second-rate to fool them with supernaturalism. So, to the extent that I'm angry, that's probably the main source of this. Yes, surprisingly, I think it was Yasser Arafat who said that the history of most of the world's wars are fights over whose invisible friend has the most power.

I will continue to receive hate mail. I know Christopher has had the strange experience of having to decide what is strange, the people who are praying for him, not necessarily even to get better, but to find faith in his time of physical illness. All those who are gloating that he will roast for eternity in hell. I think they are almost equal in number, right? I wonder if when they say, I will pray for you, he gives that wonderful response. I'll think it's brilliant for you, what we have now. Someone who belongs to a kind of great dynasty in the United States, his father is probably well known as one of the most conservative spokesmen and figures of the 50:16 years of the 70s, particularly famous for coming to blows with Gore Vidal in many occasions on television and his son has turned out to be one of the great comic writers of his time and had a small fight with his beloved father, although there were different political tendencies.

He wrote a famous essay that said something, I think it was called something like, "Sorry Dad, but I." I'm voting for Obama and he's friends with Christopher and he's a pretty wonderful writer on a common theme for the night, from the big stoner Christopher Hitchens to the big stoner as we now know Shaun 10 we get to the author of thanks. for smoking Christopher Buckley hello Christopher how are you hello Steven hello London and hello Christopher now you know something about the world of doctrinal politics in America better than most because, as I say, you come from a family and your father was a very well-known very respected also very feared as a spokesperson for the right and his name always associated with that of Gore Vidal as justing and during the 60s and you yourself have been a much kinder figure but you like Christopher and I think it is a sign that I want to reiterate about Christopher, our comics writer, and Christopher is one of the cleverest writers in English and sometimes one of the wildest.

Will you agree with that? Totally agree with that. As a footnote, I believe it was my father who gave Christopher the first exposure to him on American television and three years ago Christopher made a heroic effort to attend my father's funeral mass at st. PatrickHe flew in from Grand Rapids Michigan, I think he took the last seat, but then he found himself in the awkward position of being in the same church as Henry Kissinger and that's one of the other villagers at my father's funeral mass, so which he records in his wonderful book that tells how he went into Fifth Avenue in the rain to smoke a cigarette and thus not be counted among Henry Kissinger's audience.

I guess part of the splendor that is Christopher's life is the way he mixes it with politics and considering he was someone from the far left, the far left was always considered to be those figures who could cry for the masses but didn't have the ability , so to speak, to take care of people, where he was never like that. Do you think there's a word for Christopher's politics? Well, that's Christopher when I first met him in the early '80s, when he came to Washington and to cover the Falklands crisis that he was working as a speechwriter for George Herbert Walker Bush or the good guy.

Bush there and Christopher at that time was a very hard leftist, he wrote for all the far left publications, he was the nation's correspondent and, but he has such a flexible attitude and with a bow to Professor Dawkins, if I may. He uses the term evolutionary mind, which made quite an interesting trajectory over the years, so that he became, at the beginning of the last decade of the last century, one of the great defenders of American military invention in Iraq. It's been quite a sight to watch, but Christopher has never had anyone accuse him of being boring.

Generally okay, if I may say that Christopher was the Washington Rick Blaine I'm referring to, of course. Humphrey Bogart's character in the movie Casablanca everyone was hustling he famously in I Guess It Was the Early Years of the Clinton Administration hosted a party at his apartment in Washington after the White House Correspondents' Dinner and became at the Vanity Fair Party and everyone came and it got so big after two or three years that it had to move to a pretty interesting place, write it directly across the street, the Russian Trade Federation, which was a strange place to have a Rick's Café, but you, I mean. everyone came, on one memorable, memorable occasion, I got to Barbra Streisand, she literally caught fire by standing too close to a candle and she really the world was about to lose Barbra Streisand, Miss Parsons, politics in my own life is very divergent or perhaps discrepant to use a Chuncheon hit word, but I was one of the first to respond on Barbra Streisand's bhindi self-immolation.

You know, that's my little footnote in the story. We also have many other reasons. Thanks Christopher, but it's been extremely. nice and thank you for taking the time and blessing you and bye, thank you very much now give me one. I try my best to check it out without giving away too many secrets. You know how technically advanced Christopher and his wife are. from the fact that they both have an AOL address, I know that's all they talk about, it's like Lady Bracknell, the old-fashioned side of the square. I tried to persuade Carol Carol, who is his wife, to see if she could use an instant messaging system that they don't use.

It doesn't seem too huge to do that, she said you could even try texting me, so I guess we have some words of wisdom, but from now on, my thing, yeah, oh yeah, she chose email , which is really good. We have contributions, yes, that the games begin, it begins and these are being written by Ian McEwan because apparently his fingers are better, and this is from him and I talked late last night, we were discussing the non-communist left. In the early 50s you can't run a mile right now, but rest assured the world's ROI mind is purring softly, which is a very good line from Ian McEwan.

Now I'm going to introduce you to someone I've admired and wish I could. I could say that I know him through his poetry. I think we are lucky to live in a time when there is still a great poet. Seamus Heaney is still with us and I think the greatest living English poet is James Fenton. He is simply extraordinary. If you don't know his work, it's the best, he's as accessible as Philip Larkin, as profound as Eliot or any poet you want, he's as long-lasting and as refreshing to the mind as a purchase can be, he's absolutely perfect.

I've been one of Christopher's closest friends for as long as possible since his Oxford days as undergraduates and he's in New York, so we want to say hello if we can. - James Fenton Hi James. I have spoken a little about the extraordinary sodality of the group. That you form with Martin and Ian and lead James, Salman and Christopher, a group of friends have stayed together in a way that is truly extraordinarily inspiring. I wish I could say I knew someone from my generation who had an equivalent and it's not just the strength of their friendship it's also the amazing depth of all their individual talents when this evening was planned and created and Christopher knew he wouldn't be able to participate. , one of the things he was really excited about was the possibility of you reading a poem and I know we all love hearing that and yeah, which one did you choose and did you suggest like skip the jump, which one was my favorite?

He's the one Christopher suggested. Well, we'd love to hear it. Well, then I'll read it and before I do I'll say what I always say in America. I know I'm talking to you in England, but in America we say a dumpster is a dumpster, the dumpster I took my life and threw in the dumpster thinking the next door neighbors wouldn't care if my life came together. to the tip of the council with its dry and rotting rubble. What you find with the containers is that the whole community joins the old mattresses, the doors appear as if they are drifting along with everything that does not fit in the trash can and those things that the garbage man cannot remove from them.

I threw away my life and there it stayed and suddenly grew. What a terrible shame! He clucked an old bag and sucked his teeth like the young days without values ​​I blamed myself but I blamed no one the quality control had messed it up and that was it, he said I couldn't stay home, I took a walk, passed the container and left my life for dead without my life, the beer with lack of justice the owner still as dirty as his wife the chicken in the basket was an owl and no one said Jem boy Worth Lee life good I returned that night worn but still capable of single vision I looked in the container my life, it wasn't there, some bastard stole it without my permission, okay, then I got angry and I started screaming and I woke up in the street, okay, okay, and I got dizzy all over the neighbors truck and I disgraced myself in the park and then you know how if you've had some your waking up at dawn, all healthy like the sea breeze raring to go and thinking smartly you got your way and then oh Jesus it hits you good that morning right at 6:00 I woke up, got up and looked down. the container there lay my life still soaked in the bricks are they lame a poor old life ass overturned or was it mine still dressed I went down the stairs and took a long cold look the truth was appearing someone had just exchanged my life for theirs, poor I foolishly thought I should have left a warning.

Some bastard looked at my life and thought it was better than what he'd had, but what he'd had seemed fine. He never caught his fingers on the clipper the way I dealt with that life of mine. his life lay shining in the careless rain, but it was still a decent and authentic life, some people I can think of, I reflected, would take that thing as soon as you said knife, it seemed a shame to miss an opportunity like that. I brought life. I dried it by the stove, it looked so attractive spread out on the carpet.

I tried it, it fit like a glove, and now when a local bat drops the twig, new people take over the house, put up floors, knock down walls, and hire someone. some kind of large container, say a container for your old doors. I will watch it like a hawk and every day I do at least. Oh, half a dozen trips. I have provided an existence that way. You wouldn't believe the things you find in the bins. thank you very much Jen Fenton wonderful games Benjamin thank you very much thank you now the person we are going to talk to next is, in my opinion, in addition to being a great writer, I think his place in Christopher's life may be an explanation for some of the ways he changed Christopher's politics and that's the man he defended so brilliantly when, embarrassingly, his uncle is so embarrassing that many on the left refused to come forward and defend him and that's the man who for years had to hiding with a death threat on him for writing a book a book that if you haven't read it again is a wonderful, wonderful novel, continue writing wonderful novels, he is still the only Salman Rushdie hi Salma, it's wonderful to see you Here's a question of not to make this a fight between Oxford and Cambridge because, of course, Christian had both gone to school in Cambridge at Oxford University, but there is a Cambridge tradition that is very marked by the hard left that is arguably represented by the philosopher GE Moore and by the Bloomsbury group and in particular by the writer e/m Forster and that is the account of personal relationships and there is a famous ranger line which is if you had to choose between betraying my friend or betray my country I hope to have the courage to betray my country and that if you want was the starting point of that culture personal relationships as you know and many times I have wondered what if the Satanic Verses had been written by someone other than a incredibly close friend of Christopher's, do you think it would have been triggered the way it was?

In other words, was your friendship a part of you? You know, part of the proof that he wasn't at all difficult. It remained that there was a part of him. that was a bit Bloomsbury too, you know, I think he probably would have reacted in exactly the same way because I think what was shoved up his nose was the idea that, you know, an elderly prelate in an ancient land could sentence to death . a writer in the entire world for the crime of writing a book, I think it was something he couldn't tolerate, but I do believe that what happened then was that his friendship with me led him to become the most extraordinary ally and help her in those times difficult, I mean, I remember when after many years or many years of effort, we managed to organize, partly with the help of Christopher, a meeting with President Clinton, it was actually staggered.

Christopher's house left his house to go to the meeting that was held. the day before Thanksgiving and the day before Thanksgiving, the president of the United States always has to ceremonially pardon a turkey, a turkey, Tom, the turkey is pardoned, everyone else is killed , yes, I was going to see Clinton immediately before the turkey pardon. and so we imagined the possible headline in the next day's newspapers, which was: Clinton pardons Turkish University, but the meeting was quite successful and I remembered that George Stephanopoulos, then a Clinton aide who had been very helpful, was He was so excited when the meeting took place that he called Christopher at home and told him that the eagle had landed, so Christopher was at the center of that fight and always has been.

I have been grateful to him. It's underestimating what I feel. and furthermore his fury was directed not only at, as you rightly say, an elderly clergyman in an ancient land, but also at a rather surprising number of writers in Britain and America who were very black in presenting themselves in what seems to me so clear. In the case there were people who said: I've read the book and I don't think it's very good, as if that could be a reason why they should kill you. There were others who said that because you yourself have a left leaning.

It was an outrage that the police defended you and I think it was both their anger at the lack of defense of others and the fact that where is that fair analysis, yes, I think that's it, I think that's how I've been for For me, The main memory of those years is that Christopher was always there when I needed him, you know, one of the things I learned in those years is that that is the meaning of a friend in need, you know, and Christopher was a friend, you know. transcendent example that he was therefore whenever I needed him for whatever I needed him for and whether we thought he was fair to do with both his principles and the way he felt those principles were offended by the attack on my book but also because of his you know, as we know from his memoirs, his enormous gift for personal friendship exactly and he was going to return his memoirs that 22 when he introduces you for the first time, it might be a surprise to those who don't have the privilege to know it.

You that the first thing that impressed you was that he pressed it on you, your ease with words and the fun and games you had with words. Can you explain some of those to us?Some of your particular games are used well, Christopher, you know? a very funny man and we made up one or two types of ridiculous puns, well maybe what I could share with you is the titles that don't make it and examples of this would be a farewell to arms for those who Ring the bell mr. Vargo to kill a chaos to kill a hummingbird the receiver in the receiver in the wheat Melville's great masterpiece Toby dick etc. this is all these were games we played Martin had a Marty but he had a raunchier game but there he got hit well there was the game about hysterical sex where you replaced the word love in the titles of things with the phrase hysterical sex which gives you hysterical sex in the time of cholera, hysterical sex is a very splendid thing, all you need is hysterical love, etc.

The funny thing is that all of those people, those young people, I mean none of them, not a single one of them, a leader in their field, novelists, and I'll make those word games and another one that I remember them playing was substituting the word. penis for heart, so my penis is like a red rose, will you be my darling? I think I hope to go immediately to the center of the congregation, at least according to James Fenton, and that's one of the great novelists of our times, also a great assessment. of our times and of course oneChristopher's best friends, Martin Amos, are you there?

Hello, you remained friends over a long period of history in which you all became extraordinarily successful people and just two years ago there was a photo exhibition because you were engaged for a few years. and - Gorgas, the photographer who was a friend of all of you. I think we have some of the photographs from the National Portrait Gallery exhibition of events. Here is one with Angela and in this photograph we see Angela Gorgas living up to her nickname Angela, sorry, gorgeous: looking prettier than any man she has the right to be with a baguette in her breast pocket instead.

The next photo is called Hitch and his is a portrait, I think, and there he is absurdly handsome and the hair on his chest is You actually grew so big that you could have a long lunch with difficulty that would turn into a long dinner and then , when you went to bed at 4 in the morning, you reconciled yourself to a hangover that would last half a week. I would wake up with a groan 12 hours late and discover that Hitch had written 3,000 works on John Locke and John Stuart Mill. This was one of the most irritating things about him: he could hold his drink and sometimes stayed up all day time. night and then go on a television show with Germaine Greer and Norman Mailer, but it was not on that occasion that he staggered up to Norman Mailer and in his own description, as a stinking drunk, he said he staggered and belched up to Norman Mailer and said that I read that interview where you said I'm Martin eNOS and Ian Hamilton, former homosexual cleek in the London literary world and he said and I just want you to know that I think that's very unfair to Ian Hamilton and to have been born thinking that that's not It won't turn out the way he wanted it, of course, there is the eternal mystery that will join the mysteries that Thomas Brown mentioned in You know we will never know what name Achilles took when he was among women and we will never know.

We know the song that the siren sang and we will never know the names of the two men in the Tory government that Hitchens slept with when he was a young student, but I don't expect you to reveal the game, but it is an intriguing game that will be played forever, but you can see why they slept with him because he was quite handsome and the other picture here again with a cigarette but the most surprising thing is that he has a couple of businesses and it is titled everything related to the Rothschild property. We agreed on that idea. that Bollinger's Bolshevik was inherently hypocritical had to be expelled because only right-wing people should be able to enjoy champagne and Christopher was very aware of the right and the wrong, but I would like to tell this little story about, I think, the spectacles. how did you feel about class we were in a restaurant, a small restaurant, there were two elegant and decadent young men endlessly and unag Nora bleah pestering the staff to rearrange the tables so they could accommodate the big party they accepted we were average bohemians They were minor nobility, I would say, and they had that look of those people who wait with epic calm for the death of elderly relatives and one of these young men came up and just pounced, crouched elegantly in front of Christopher and me and obviously he was going to kill us. ask us to move the tables and she pouted through her bangs and said, after a flirtatious pause, you're going to hate us for this, Christmas said, we hate you, it's already wonderful, you two haven't joined us in any way. way, thank you very much.

I really want to end by thanking all the contributors from all over Los Angeles for our brief glimpse of Sean Penn and his cigarette and all of Christopher's friends for Richard taking a train from Sheffield, I think, where you were to be here tonight and for all of you to come even though they knew the real hero was not going to be present. I spoke to him on the phone before going on stage. His voice was hoarse but excited. He's excited that tonight happened and I know it. On behalf of him and his wife, I would like you to thank you all very cordially for coming and for allowing us to have.

It's not really the kind of thing I do very well in this kind of TV presenting and talking to delayed satellites, but everyone has been incredibly kind and supportive and thank you so much for everything I can say about you.