And Yet... (43 page)

I
. It perhaps counts as an irony of British society that the little Oxfordshire churchyard in which Orwell was laid to rest, in the village of Sutton Courtenay, became also the “last resting place” of Margot Asquith's husband, the former prime minister and Earl of Oxford and Asquith. Equality between the one and the ninety-nine was attainable at least in death.

II
. This is a very acute register of what Orwell himself called “a power of facing unpleasant facts.” Netted in a world of lies, he wanted not to be spared the bad news or coddled by victory propaganda at his place of work. And he despised the alternative flow of information and insight, which was gossip and rumor. Like Winston Smith, he was first and foremost activated by a raging thirst to know: a thirst that could only be slaked by a personal quest for the least varnished version of the truth.

III
. It is from this poem of William Blake's that Orwell also claimed one of his favorite lines, and one of the clues to his personality: “A truth that's told with bad intent / Beats all the lies you can invent.”

IV
. It deserves to be said that Orwell went on to write several analyses and condemnations of anti-Semitism and to attack contemporary writers like G. K. Chesterton who exploited it in their work. Among his colleagues and friends at the socialist weekly
Tribune
he numbered two Jewish colleagues, Jon Kimche and T. R. “Tosco” Fyvel. Not to recycle any corny allusion to “some of my best friends,” but Fyvel regarded Orwell as free from prejudice and even as having been slightly prescient in his misgivings about Zionism, then a popular cause on the left. (Orwell thought that even if it were a just cause it would necessitate a garrison state to defend itself against the rival nationalism that it had defeated.)

P
ATRIOTIC AND TRIBAL
feelings belong to the squalling childhood of the human race, and become no more charming in their senescence. They are particularly unattractive when evinced by a superpower. But ironies of history may yet save us. English language and literature, oft-celebrated as one of the glories of “Western” and even “Christian” civilization, turn out to have even higher faculties than used to be claimed for them. In my country of birth the great new fictional practitioners have in their front rank names like Rushdie, Ishiguro, Kureishi, Mo. This attainment on their part makes me oddly proud to be whatever I am, and convinces me that internationalism is the highest form of patriotism.

(
The Nation
, July 15/22, 1991)

Christopher Hitchens
was born April 13, 1949, in England and graduated from Balliol College at Oxford University. The father of three children, he was the author of more than twenty books and pamphlets, including collections of essays, criticism, and reportage. His book
god Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
was a finalist for the 2007 National Book Award and an international bestseller. His bestselling memoir,
Hitch-22
, was a finalist for the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography. His 2011 bestselling omnibus of selected essays,
Arguably
, was named by the
New York Times
as one of the ten best books of the year. A visiting professor of liberal studies at the New School in New York City, he was also the I. F. Stone professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. He was a columnist, literary critic, and contributing editor at
Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, Slate, The Times Literary Supplement, The Nation, New Statesman, World Affairs
, and
Free Inquiry
, among other publications. He died in Houston on December 15, 2011. The following year, Yoko Ono awarded him the Lennon-Ono Grant for Peace.

MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT

SimonandSchuster.com

authors.simonandschuster.com/Christopher-Hitchens

ALSO BY CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

BOOKS

Hostage to History: Cyprus from the Ottomans to Kissinger

Blood, Class, and Nostalgia: Anglo-American Ironies

Imperial Spoils: The Curious Case of the Elgin Marbles

Why Orwell Matters

No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton

Letters to a Young Contrarian

The Trial of Henry Kissinger

Thomas Jefferson: Author of America

Thomas Paine's “Rights of Man”: A Biography

god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever

Hitch-22: A Memoir

Mortality

PAMPHLETS

Karl Marx and the Paris Commune

The Monarchy: A Critique of Britain's Favorite Fetish

The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice

A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq

ESSAYS

Prepared for the Worst: Selected Essays and Minority Reports

For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports

Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere

Love, Poverty and War: Journeys and Essays

Arguably: Essays

COLLABORATIONS

Callaghan: The Road to Number Ten
(with Peter Kellner)

Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question
(with Edward Said)

When the Borders Bleed: The Struggle of the Kurds
(photographs by Ed Kashi)

International Territory: The United Nations, 1945–95
(photographs by Adam Bartos)

Vanity Fair's Hollywood
(with Graydon Carter and David Friend)

Left Hooks, Right Crosses: A Decade of Political Writing
(edited with Christopher Caldwell)

Is Christianity Good for the World?
(with Douglas Wilson)

Hitchens vs. Blair: The Munk Debate on Religion
(edited by Rudyard Griffiths)

A note about the index:
The pages referenced in this index refer to the page numbers in the print edition. Clicking on a page number will take you to the ebook location that corresponds to the beginning of that page in the print edition. For a comprehensive list of locations of any word or phrase, use your reading system's search function.

Note: Page numbers in
boldface
indicate the subjects of reviews or prose pieces.

absolutism,
273

Abu Ghraib prison,
258

Acheson, Dean,
92
,
96

Acropolis,
238
,
240

Acropolis Museum,
240
–42

Acropolis Restoration Service,
235

Adamic, Louis,
26

Adams, John,
44

Adler, Georg, et al., eds.,
The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg,
273
–79

Afghanistan, war in,
119
–20

Africa, Guevara in,
13
–14,
15

“After Strange Gods” (Eliot),
80

After the Victorians: The Decline of Britain in the World
(Wilson),
91
–96

Age of Jackson, The
(Schlesinger),
202

Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud,
248
,
249
,
265

AIDS,
252

Akçam, Taner,
35

Akhmatova, Anna,
150

Alamo,
80

Albright, Madeleine,
255

Alexander the Great,
3

“ ‘Alimentary, Dr. Leiter': Anal Anxiety in
Diamonds Are Forever
” (Allen),
97
–98

Al Jazeera,
106
–7,
112

Allen, Dennis W., “ ‘Alimentary, Dr. Leiter': Anal Anxiety in
Diamonds Are Forever
,”
97
–98

Allen, George,
75

Allende, Salvador,
17
,
160
,
258

Allingham, Margery,
167

All the Year Round,
291
–92

al-Qaeda,
66
,
105
,
111
,
120
,
248

Altenberg, Peter,
150

Alter, Victor,
22

Alteration, The
(Amis),
307

American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU),
106
,
110
,
112
,
226

American Enterprise Institute,
194

American Nazi Party,
110

American Notes for General Circulation
(Dickens),
297

American Revolution,
55

Americans for Democratic Action (ADA),
116
,
118
,
120

Amis, Kingsley

The Alteration,
307

The James Bond Dossier,
98

Amristar massacre (1919),
93
,
206

Anderson, John,
200

Anderson, Jon Lee,
Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life,
1
–18

Anderson, Perry,
279

English Questions,
27

Andress, Ursula,
99

Angola, Cuban expedition to,
6

Animal Farm
(Orwell),
23
,
24
,
28

Antaeus (Greek legend),
267
–68

Anti-Defamation League (ADL),
124
–25

Antigone
(Sophocles),
237

Anti-Suffrage League,
154

Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (1996),
112
,
226

Aplin, Hugh, transl.,
A Hero of Our Time
(Lermontov),
57
,
62

Arafat, Yasser,
136
,
254

Arbenz, Jacobo,
8
,
9
–10,
11
,
14

Area of Darkness, An
(Naipaul),
221

Armas, Castillo,
9

Armenia,
261
–64

Armey, Dick,
271

Armitage, Richard,
256

Aron, Raymond,
148

Ashcroft, John,
108
,
111

Ashe, Arthur,
73

Assad, Bashar,
266

Assad, Hafez al-,
128

Astor, Nancy,
93

As You Like It
(Shakespeare),
275
–76

Atatürk, Kemal,
34
–35,
36
–37

Atlantic, The

“A. N. Wilson: Downhill All the Way” (January/February 2006),
91
–96

“Arthur Schlesinger: The Courier” (December 2007),
197
–202

“Barack Obama: Cool Cat” (January/February 2009),
229
–34

“Blood for No Oil!” (May 2006),
115
–21

“Clive James: The Omnivore” (April 2007),
147
–51

“Edmund Wilson: Literary Companion” (September 2007),
163
–68