Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Christopher Hitchens Was An Impossible Act To Follow


The British newspaper the Telegraph offers a piece by Carol Blue, the wife of the late writer and speaker Christopher Hitchens. Blue recalls her husbands final days in the piece.

Onstage, my husband was an impossible act to follow.

If you ever saw him at the podium, you may not share Richard Dawkins’s assessment that “he was the greatest orator of our time”, but you will know what I mean – or at least you won’t think, “She would say that, she’s his wife.”
 
Offstage, my husband was an impossible act to follow.
 
At home at one of the raucous, joyous, impromptu eight-hour dinners we often found ourselves hosting, where the table was so crammed with ambassadors, hacks, political dissidents, college students and children that elbows were colliding and it was hard to find the space to put down a glass of wine, my husband would rise to give a toast that could go on for a stirring, spellbinding, hysterically funny 20 minutes of poetry and limerick reciting, a call to arms for a cause, and jokes. “How good it is to be us,” he would say in his perfect voice.
 
My husband is an impossible act to follow. 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/9480797/Christopher-Hitchens-an-impossible-act-to-follow.html

You can also read an earlier post on the passing of Christopher Hitchens via the below link:

http://pauldavisoncrime.blogspot.com/2011/12/in-memoriam-christopher-hitchens-1949.html 

No comments:

Post a Comment