In the prologue to his recent memoir, Hitch-22, Christopher Hitchens confessed to “customary reservations” about the whole project perhaps being “too soon”, but then said that such concerns were swiftly dissipated by the “blunt realisation” that “the project could become, at any moment, ruled out of the question as having been undertaken ‘too late'”.
These words acquired a new resonance when Hitchens announced on 30 June that he was to undergo treatment for oesophageal cancer. In a short statement published on the website of Vanity Fair, where he has been a columnist since 1992, he wrote: “I have been advised by my physician that I must undergo a course of chemotherapy on my oesophagus. This advice seems persuasive to me.”
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