Journalist Christopher Hitchens dies after battle with cancer
British-born journalist, literary critic and author, Christopher Hitchens, has died of pneumonia, during treatment for cancer, aged 62.
His fight against oesophageal cancer had been widely-chronicled since it was first diagnosed in June last year, and he had vividly documented his declining health in his Vanity Fair column.
Vanity Fair editor Grayson Carter described the writer as someone "of ferocious intellect, who was as vibrant on the page as he was at the bar".
"Those who read him felt they knew him, and those who knew him were profoundly fortunate souls."
Hitchens began his career as a journalist in Britain in the 1970s, and later moved to New York, becoming contributing editor to Vanity Fair in 1992.
In an August, 2010 essay for the magazine he wrote: "I love the imagery of struggle.
"I sometimes wish I were suffering in a good cause, or risking my life for the good of others, instead of just being a gravely endangered patient."
He wrote for numerous publications including The Times Literary Supplement, the Daily Express, the London Evening Standard, Newsday and The Atlantic. He also wrote 17 books.