Christopher Hitchens is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and a visiting professor of liberal studies at the New School. He regularly writes for the Atlantic Monthly and Slate, and is the author of numerous books, including Letters to a Young Contrarian and Why Orwell Matters. He was named one of the “Top 100 Public Intellectuals” by Foreign Policy and Britain’s Prospect. 

Mr. Hitchens was born in Portsmouth, England and educated at the Leys School, Cambridge, and Balliol College, Oxford, where he read Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. From 1971-1981, he worked in Britain as book reviewer for the Times; social science editor of the Times Higher Education Supplement; assistant editor and staff writer for the New Statesman; researcher/reporter for London Weekend Television; and chief foreign correspondent for the Daily Express. In 1981, he emigrated to the United States.

From 1982-2002, he wrote a column called the “Minority Report” for The Nation. Since 1992, he has been columnist and contributing editor at Vanity Fair and, at different times, Washington editor and columnist for Harper’s magazine, American columnist and correspondent for the Spectator, the New Statesman, the Times Literary Supplement, Sunday Today, and the Sunday Correspondent. As foreign correspondent and travel writer, he has written from more than sixty countries on all five continents.