Born April 13, 1949, in Portsmouth, England; died of pneumonia and complications from esophageal cancer, December 15, 2011, in Houston, TX; immigrated to the United States, 1981; son of Eric Ernest (a naval officer) and Yvonne Hitchens; married Eleni Meleagrou (a press officer), June 18, 1981 (divorced); married Carol Blue, 1991; children: three (two with Meleagrou and one with Blue). Education: Balliol College, Oxford, P.P.E. (with honors), 1970; attended Leys School, Cambridge. Politics: Socialist.

• (Editor) Karl Marx, The Paris Commune, 1871, Sidgwick & Jackson (London, England), 1971.
• (With Peter Kellner) Callaghan: The Road to Number Ten (biography), Cassell (London, England), 1976.
• (With David Stephens) Inequalities in Zimbabwe, foreword by Garfield Todd, Minority Rights Group (London, England), 1981.
• Cyprus, Quartet (New York, NY), 1984, revised edition with new preface by Hitchens published as Hostage to History: Cyprus from the Ottomans to Kissinger, Noonday (New York, NY), 1989.
• The Elgin Marbles: Should They Be Returned to Greece?, with essays by Robert Browning and Graham Binns, Chatto & Windus (London, England), 1987, published as Imperial Spoils: The Curious Case of the Elgin Marbles, Hill & Wang (New York, NY), 1988, published as Imperial Spoils: The Case of the Parthenon Marbles, Hill & Wang (London, England), 1989, new edition published as The Parthenon Marbles: The Case for Reunification, Verso (London, England and New York, NY), 2008.
• (Editor and contributor, with Edward W. Said) Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question, Verso (New York, NY), 1988.
• Prepared for the Worst: Selected Essays and Minority Reports, Hill & Wang (New York, NY), 1988.
• The Monarchy, Chatto & Windus (London, England), 1990.
• Blood, Class, and Nostalgia: Anglo-American Ironies, Farrar (New York, NY), 1990, published as Blood, Class, and Nostalgia: The Enduring Anglo-American Relationship, Nation Books (New York, NY), 2004.
• For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports, Verso (New York, NY), 1993.
• (With Adam Bartos) International Territory: The United Nations, 1945-95, Verso (New York, NY), 1994.
• (Author of introduction) Ed Kashi, When Borders Bleed: The Struggles of the Kurds, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1994.
• The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice, Verso (New York, NY), 1995.
• No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton, Verso (New York, NY), 1999.
• Vanity Fair's Hollywood, Viking Studio (New York, NY), 2000.
• Letters to a Young Contrarian, Basic Books (New York, NY), 2001.
• The Trial of Henry Kissinger, Verso (New York, NY), 2001.
• Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere, Verso (New York, NY), 2001.
• (Editor, with Christopher Caldwell) Left Hooks, Right Crosses: A Decade of Political Writing, Thunder's Mouth Press/Nation Books (New York, NY), 2002.
• Orwell's Victory, Allen Lane/Penguin Press (London, England), 2002.
• Why Orwell Matters, Basic Books (New York, NY), 2002.
• A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq, Plume (New York, NY), 2003.
• Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays, Nation Books (New York, NY), 2004.
• Thomas Jefferson: Author of America, Atlas Books/HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2005.
• God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Twelve (New York, NY), 2007.
• Thomas Paine's Rights of Man: A Biography, Atlantic Monthly Press (New York, NY), 2007.
• (Selector, and author of introduction) The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever, Da Capo (Philadelphia, PA), 2007.
• (With Douglas Wilson) Is Christianity Good for the World?, Canon Press (Moscow, ID), 2008.
• (Author of afterword) Simon Cottee and Thomas Cushman, editors, Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left, New York University Press (New York, NY), 2008.
• (Contributor) Vanity Fair, the Portraits: A Century of Iconic Images, Abrams (New York, NY), 2008.
• Hitch-22 (memoir), Twelve (New York, NY), 2010.
• The Quotable Hitchens: From Alcohol to Zionism, Da Capo Press (Cambridge, MA), 2011.

Also author of BBC-TV documentary, The God That Fled, and of Hell's Angel, a documentary about Mother Teresa, for British television.

Author of introduction of Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, by Rebecca West, Penguin Books (New York, NY), 2007.

Contributor to numerous periodicals, including the Literary Review, New Left Review, New York Review of Books, Observer, Newsday, Washington Post Book World, Granta, London Review of Books, Vogue, New Left Review, Dissent, Times Literary Supplement, and Vanity Fair.