>> rose: welcome to our program. tonight we remember appreciate, and talk about the late christher hitchens. with four of his great friends. martin amis, james fenton, ian mcaugust and salman rushdie. >> you were saying about friendship an martin was saying also was that one of the thing us could do with christopher is to radically disagree with him without harming the friendship. >> absolutely. >> you could take him on, you know, or be taken on by him, about whatever idea you had, and express yourself as vehemently as upon. and it wouldn't really shake the basis of your fondness for each other at all.

vising him was, we all went t was not like visiting most others. because he didn't want to talk about being ill. and he wanted to talk about reading and what was going on and everything else. and then he needed to sleep a lot. and he would like to find threw when he woke up. >> he was the spirit of 68y. it was the revolutionary spirit that waso engaging. and the source, i suppose, of many ridiculous things that were said and felt by many fine things too. >> he was the only friend i have ever had. i think this is a mark of friendship that isn't much explored. that you can say anything to no matter how shameful, how horribly revealing of yourself. you can admit to all your

worst impulses. and you don't, i didn't, i never felt i had to taylor it to fit in wh his idea of me. it was a candor that established itself instantly, and never waivered. >> rose: an appreciation of christopher hitchens for the hour. when we continue. >> funding for charlie rose was provided by the following:

captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> we're going to focus on useful thing that is why i havbegin my book with it, you ould always know, your time is very limited and that you are lucky to live in a time and praise where you can be healthy until your 60s as i was. most people in history have never had a chance to even

hope for a thing like that. so no, for the avoidance of hubris i think it is good to have a sober being of the presence of death. >> rose: christopher hitchens would have been 63 years old today, the british author and journalist died in december last year due to complications of cancer of the he soph gas. martin am said he thinks like a child, more instinctive, moral and visceral than they are seen and animated by a child's egger -- desh writes like a distinguished author and speaks like a genius. >> it's not for everybody. not everyone wants to always be an out of step or against the stream. but if that is-- if you do feel the consensus doesn'tp speak for you, if there is something about you that makes you feel that it would be worth being unpopular or marginal for the chance to lead your own life and have a life instead of a career, or job, then i can promise

you it is worthwhile, yeah. half the time when i was arguing with the so-called anti-war movement they would say their reason for opposing the war is that if it began, saddam hussein would on late huge numbers of americans and israelis and neighboring countries by his weapons of mass destruction. that was their case for peace. >> in other words, people can be, people have to take part in their own deception. >> the only revolution which has a chance of worth emulating, worth starting for other countries is pluralism, religious freedom, separation, secular separation, and the rise of any ones who try and make a living in their own way worshipping their own god. it may not sound very grandios but it's not bad and will serve an most of the countries have i been to in the past few year was all be taking a step up if they moved in that direction and most of them know it. so to discover that after it has shaken out that the american volution still has life and purpo and

meat and muss nell it, i think is rather inspiring thing for someone of my age. i don't think i would have another chance to take part in a revolution. and now the united states is involved in combat, that is jeffersonian, around the world. >> the worship of nonexistent entity, attempt to derive morality from the supernatural, all of that is more, i think, than mistaken or irritating. it's becoming actually ver menacing now. for the people who think they have permission of that sortrom e heavens are trying to kill us. >> hitchens rose to prominence of books such as god is not great, miss memoir hitch 22 but as much as anything, he was seen for his love of friendship. >> here is something i admire deeply about you two. is the noise of friendship. you form bonds with martin amis, julian barnes, ian mcewing and others. >> i have been lucky with my

contemporaries, they taught me to you ho write more importantow not to ite. i was rather didactic polemical writer, i was writing for the cause, rather. i wasn't paying very much attention to style. they pointed out to me it be:be enjoyable to read and write things as well as a duty to do so. introduce immediate to writers i hadn't appreciated enough like nabakov, for example. broadened my outlook, deepened my feeling for language. as well as providingme wi awondrful context of yes, amusing friendship. >> rose: michael weiss once said friendship was his ideology, as christopher liked to put it, friends are god's apology for relations. joining me now, four very good friends who knew him better than anyone i know. they are martin amis author of the rachel paper, money

and the pregnant window, james fenton. ian mcewing author of atonement, saturday and solar, and salman rushdie author of midnight's children, satanic versus and enchant res of florence, they have written morbut those are a list of some we will refer to now. i am pleased especially pleased to have them here to remember, reflect, appreciate, talk about christopher hitchens, one of the favored guests here on this program over the last 20 years of our existence. and i begin with martin amis. give me a sense of who he was. >> that's difficult. i, he was the only friend i have ever had. i think this is a mark of friendsp that isn't much explored. that you can say anything to no matter how shameful, how horribly revealing of yourself. you can admit to all your worst impulses. and you don't, i didn't, i never felt i had to tailor

it to fit in with his idea of me. it was a candor that established itself instantly, and never waivered. but how to sum up the hitch, he's a very unusual man. he flirted with ideology in a way, i think, that no one else at this table ever had. he was, in fact, strongly ideaological. and it was not until the fall of communism in 1989 that he really blots omed as a writer, i think and even then he was sort of looking out for other ideologies. to hitch his wag ento for a bit. and that'swhatave us his peculiar stance on iraq.

he wasn't very common sensical, that's why people loved him. because he was-- he seemed to be having major argument with himself as if only the hitch was worth arguing with. >> rose: james? >> when i first knew him he was absolutely the leading figur one of e lading figures on the revolutionary left in oxford. nd we, for our last year we shared a house together. and he was, i have to tell you, i don't think it's a secret, he was a very bad trotskite, he was on the lazy side. >> i can remember putting

the mug of coffee beside his bed, going back downstairs, and coming up, knock on the door again saying christopher, please get up. and then realizing that when de get up, the coffee was going to be cold and he was going to go through that revulsion at the first mouthful of cold coffee. making an extra cup of coffee and so on. and the first thing practically that we did together the first significant thing was we went tour his revolutionary group, which i wasn't yet a member of. and they used to meet in rooms above pubs, you know, rooms that were normally used by an organization called the elks, elk horns. and we went to one of these rooms for the meeting. and the plan was, a friend

and i, we were going to-- we said the reason why christopher hasn't been coming to the meetings is that he has been working so hard, proselytizing an here we are as new members, prospective new members of the group. and so we got him, we saved him from being thrown out of the trotski movement, that was the first thing we did. >> last time hitch came to my house two and a half years ago, two years ago in central london, it was an endless repetition and we've all experienced this. the face, the great hairy unshaved face, right into yours demanding that manly questions. -- kiss, and on its last occasion martin was already in the house. and i think your memory is not as distinct of mine. he said before i come in, before you pour me a drink there si woman on the other side of square being harassed and we have to go across and sort them out.

martin and i looked at each other, great, he said there is only seven of them. come on, there are three of us. so we set off, two of us, very reluctant soldiers, private, this little private army and we got there, thank god there was no one there, they'd all gone. and i any of this story because he was a street fighter. i mean intellectually, and also he's chased villains down the street. de in washington, some mugger he pursued and i remember years ago in manhattan he pursued someone. >> he got roughed up quite badly rescuing a woman from an abusive friend. >> that could have been you and me. >> he got cuffed up erasing graffiti. >> in beirut. >> yeah. >> no he was putting the graffiti up. he was writing some anti-fascist graffiti and the facists jumped him. >> i remember, when i first met christopher later than martin and james knew him, i

met him at the notting hill carnival in somebody's house. and he was suspicious of me because i had friends on the left who were not the kind of left that christopher approved of. so he thought i was going to be, you know -- >> what sort of friend does you mean, name names. >> and he thought i would be there unsuitably leftist and was relieved to find that i was more suitable than he had feared. and but the street fighter thing is true. and i was very struck that when god is not great came out and he had to go on tour for t instead of doing the normal book tour which all of us do, he asked-- asked for adversaries to be provided everywhere he went. he asked the publishers to set him up with christian opponents, you know, in every city, local priests and et cetera, and of an

absolutely opposite position. and he would take them on. and that was his nature. he without want the debate. >> and he knew his bible. >> yes. >> i did one of those with tony blair. >> that's right. that was late. he took on blair. but demolishing blair is not the hardest thing to do. but he did it. no, i thought that was very characteristic, that instead of just going to read from his book and do a signing, he actually every we are we he wantedo take somebody on. >> he had hundreds of people in book lines saying to him thank god you have come. we are not just the bible belt. and there were plenty of secular. >> each of you is defined by writing. is he more defined by debate than writing? >> well, i slightly disagree with what martin said about 1989 being when he sort of became a writer. because i don't think it was something you know -- unsort of in his scheme of things.

ihink 1989 was something he would have welcomed at any time. i, the fall of eastern europe, of communism. but we have welcomed it from a socialist point of view. and i think that but i do think that before he went to the states, he wasn't really-- he wasn't really at his best as a writer, as such. he was extremely political, extremely good in conversation, extreme-- he would always be in very, very good in debate. he was a marvelous public speaker. but he was a bit on the sloppy side of the writing. but then in the states he became more and more of a writer. and i think this was-- perhaps

a slower development for him than it had been for other people around this table. >> rose: george orwell was his what, martin? >> well, he was what sol bell owe is for you. >> maybe, hitch always used to stress, he said it's very important that, to recognize that orwell wasn't a genius. that his-- his strength was a kind of exalted common sense. but it's amazing how often orwell turns out not onl t be right but to have said the best thing about any number of subjects. >> christopher is a very good hater. he started hating a sequence of people who were worth hating. he hated henry kissinger. he hated mother teresa. and later on he hated bill clinton, you know. and i think those, those,

those were vehement but they weren't just emotional, they were highly articulatesed and thought out hatreds. and i think he was very good at that. >> rose: of course we always remind you i have also wtten abouteopllike thomas invest son that i didn't hate. >> yeah, it's true. >> he was really a member of the anti-totalitarian left. i mean all of us, certainly weeks we can remember during the fall cans war most of the country-- fall cans war most were for it but some were against, except for hitch because his argument was, and it turned out to be absolutely right, that to wage war against the argentinians would be to lead to the fall of the junta. and fall of galitieri. and that was a consistent theme that ran all the way through. his iraq stand was in line with. >> rose: you can say what you just expressed is a direct line to why he took the position he did about

iraq? >> yes, well, i think it sorts of is. but on the way, there is-- what christopher had to do around about that time was he had to, he had to change his mind publicly. and in a way that for many people would be humiliating because he was completely realigning himself politically. and so a certain amount of what that was, was he was-- a high decibel level saying to the rest, you have changed. you have all changed. the left has changed. so on and so making it seem less obvious that his position had chaed. his siti had ange but it was-- but this thing about him was consistent, that interventionism was a

good idea. now in the case of iraq what he said was i remember him, i remember him saying it to me over the phone. he said, he said what iraq will become is a protectorate, an american protectorate and that will be the basis in the future. and as a result of that, we won't need saudi arabia. iraq will be the basis from which we then export democracy. >> democratic institutions. >> and it was a mistake. i think one of the things too you were saying about friendship, and what martin was saysing also, was one of the thing us could do with christopher is to radically disagree with him without harming the friendship. you could take him on, you know, or be taken on by him, about whatever idea you had. and express yourself as vehemently as possible and it really wouldn't shake the basis o your fnde reac

at all. >> tell me about the story about john lakaret, you were having a public spat with him. and christopher waded in, and made it ten times worse. >> i mean, well, what had happened was that will carrier at the time of the iranian attack on the satanic versus was one of the few, i mean so few the writers who would not support him that you could count them on the fingers of both hands if i had some fingers to spare. but he was one of those. >> right. >> and he accused me of various self-regarding acts like you know, hi done it on purpose to make myself more famous and make more money, et cetera. and how, and said something about how one couldn't insult a religion with impunity, thus suggesting that if you did, it was okay for you to be attacked. anyway, i let that go at the time because i had some larger fish to friday. and then some years later, he lecarrier got into

trouble here in new york because he said something which the american jewish community disapproved of. and so he was accused in some way of having made an anti-sim etic rework-- remark and got very up set and wrote a large rebuttal, you know, of his how dare they call me anti-semitic. and so i shouldn't have done it but i sort of left it and said well, it would be more easier to sympathize with this writer under attack from this religious group if that particular writer had been more sympathetic to another writer being attacked by a different religious group. this drove lecarrier around the bend and he start add becausing me and i sort of abused him back. and this was very enjoyable for the english press who were running this exchange of letters on the front page. and then christopher jumped in. and wrote the rudest letter i-- anybody has ever written. >> rose: what de say. >> he said something about that lecarrier reminded him of a man who urinates it in his own, in his hat and then

puts the brimming chappeau on his head. thats what just the first sentence. >> rose: is anybody at this table surprised. >> no, no, no. he liked being rude to people but he also liked to be liked. so that said. >> that was the paradox as a socialist and man of the people how rude he could be to cabbies. i mean -- >> oh my god t was embarrassing. he if are you so smart what are you doing dealing in a dump like this. or taxi driver f are you so smart why are you steering this bed pan around town. i mean completely -- >> he made us all get out of the cab and walk. >> when he was ill, we got into a cab together and hitch said we are going the natural htory se and the guy was ukrainian. he said i don't know where it is. we're getting outing you are living in this contribution you don't know why where the natural history museum s you don't deserve our fare. and hitch got out and almost fell over on the pavement he

was silo. and we got out too, we had to get another cab with an approved cabbie who knew where the natural history museum was. >> rose: wasn't there a time also that you got into a thing, you wrote him a lovely letter talking about the difference between being anatist and being agnostic. >> yeah. well, i thinking amost civil is the more rational position because since we no so very little about the universe, it's a bit previous to say there is no higher intelligence since the uniforms is much clevererer than we are. and we have you know, cosmology is almost going backyards, we are just finding out more about our ignorance. and hitch i said in the piece that strict athei can vulnerable to the accusation and hitch would never be vulnerable to this accusation of being lentin,

of being a bit pinched and crabbed. and we did disagree about that. but as salomon says, we had violent arguments about trotski and lenin, et cetera. but i never had a slightest wob nell my friendship with hitch. it was -- >> the god thing, i think in different ways one could have aifferent position to christopr on that. i mean i used to feel that religion is a private matter, was not my business. you know, that if there were people who found sustenance or moral strength or whatever it might be from religious observance, then it wasn't for me to tell them not to. you know. and christopher's view was more absolutist than that and was, as his subtitle of his book, religion poisons everything. and that you can't make that private public distinction

he argues inhe book because the trouble with those private beliefs is that people use them to justify attacks on actual individuals, you know, in the public sphere. so you could have that disagreement with christopher without it affecting your thinking. but i actually think the religion moment, the god is not great moment s sort of the moment at which christopher came back from his, from if you like the iraq mistake, you know, and kind of regained his genuine intellectual ground. the things that he was, that we a, i guess, accepted or thought of more as the real christopher. i think that is when he got his audience back here. people began to actually become very fond of him. during the iraq years i think there were a lot of people who were very disappointed or angry with his positions. and then he would sort of regain this but ended up very beloved. >> what about this idea that goes all way to oxford this notion that it was a double life there was a double set of books.

>> yes. >> what is that? >> well, do you mean that he-- he always flends on the left and friends on the right. yeah. >> conservative social friends on one side and his ideaological friends somewhere else. >> well, this is absolutely the case. and people on the-- people on the left saw it. and they saw it as a kind of treachery. they knew that he was doing things like, he was partying with one and preaching with the other. >> that's right, yeah. >> that, yes, and they accused him of being a-- of bolshevik all that. why shouldn't the rich people drink l the champagne. it was -- >> it was, there was a particular character in oxford at the time who was much disliked figure on-- on the students because he seems to represent everything, everything that was wrong with oxford.

he was the ward end of all souls, his name was john sparrow. and christopher seeing john sparrow, christopher was just, he was going to charm john sparrow. and he and he jolly did. >> he charmed the spar owe out of him. >> he was the biggest flirt in the history of flirting. i mean he really was. >> rose: coflirt. >> he could flirt. and flirting with men was absolutely, you know, as much as flirting with women. >> at that time when he has to leave a party early, and about 20 people there, both sexes. a he id i wi just ma a brief pass at everyone here and then be on my way. (laughter) >> that double life extended to the books. you think of his taste in poetry, passionate about

chesterton. >> kip ling as well as nonrevolutionary poets. >> yes. in fact that last piece he was trying to write as he was dying was on a biography of chesterton. >> he did write it. now, and it's sort of know your enemies. get close to your enemies >> those, it was-- if you are getting that close, it's not an enemy, did is-- it's having trends on both sides. >> he's very proud of the picture he has of himself on a grouse moore, he came friday and showed thus picture on all fours and there is a gun and various sort of flunkies standing around. >> it was always one of the characteristics of these parties that he would have in d.c., for example, he always had one around the time of the white house rrespondent dinner. >> rose: would you always go over there after. >> if you looked at who was in the room, i mean it was

the entire spectrum of political opinion and you know, in the united states it wasn't just one gang. it really was everyone. and he wanted that. he didn't write fiction. >> no he was -- >> we often wondered why. >> rose: i'm asking. >> sometimes, he wasn't the literary type. >> no he was-- he wasn't the literary type,. >> i don't think he -- >> he knew lots of potery t wasn't that he wasn't litry but he-- . >> rose: he read but didn't write s that you what say. >> i don't think we be interested in spending his day with imaginary people. >> i think that is shall did --. >> i think the reason he stayed in d.c. and never came to live in a city like this one, like new york is that he liked to be in that, in the bubble, you know, inside that world of what was going on. >> that was real. >> the people, politicians made decisions that were real. >> and he would go places to find outhat was going on.

>> rose: how do you characterize his influence on the political debates. >> i think he became impossible to ignore. that he could be --. >> rose: whether you agreed with him or not you had to hear him. >> because he was so superarticulate and very, very knowledgeable about, he never took on stuff without knowing his, without knowing his subject. so you could agree with him or disagree with him dramatically but it became one of the voices that you had to deal with. and i think he wanted to be that person. >> rose: what happened to your friendship when you wrote why i embraced islam. >> he was, christopher was an ally, as i s, whether he agreed with you or not. and that was, i mean as a weak moment for me and i think he understood the reason for the weakness. but i think to go back up a little bit from that, i think the other thing that happened to christopher in 1989, other than the fall of communism, was the attack on my novel. and his beginning to be aware of the threat as he saw it of radical islam.

and i think you know from there to the 9/11 attack, ere was in hi a growing sense that there was a real problem that people weren't looking at straight. and that became a growing part of his interests. and so they brought us closer together. >> rose: brought you closer together. >> yeah. >> i'm also very proud, i have a chapter on this too, having been a friend of salman rushdie's during the time of the fat what when he was on the run, when not only did a friend need his friends but when a very important principal, the whole principles of freedom expressions neededo stand against the most direct possible challenge. a death threat backed by death squads backed by the leader. and when people didn't show too much stomach for that, that was a very educational time in my life. >> are we missing out just how funny he was. >> rose: i want to make sure. >> the first time i met, it

was martin who introduced me to hitch. he said you have to meet my friend. >> rose: what de say. >> if only i can remember exactly what was happening. first we went to martin's relative disgusting little flat. and then we went, he emed to specialize in those days in empty greek strunts. the only customers. and the two of you had a rye teen already worked out. jokes were referred to merely by numbers or sounds or yell s that referred to long stories that had already been sort of encapsulated. the next morning i broke woke up, i felt as if my ribs had been kicked in. >> rose: because you laughed so much. >> and he was very, very. >> no question. i can remember sitting in martin's kitsch then london actually weeping with laughr. not very many people have actually caused tears of laughter to run down my face but christopher would do that. >> rose: he once said but, though, he said that the thing, lots of things he said about you. but one was that he said

that about friendship, he said that your love of language took precedence over your love of friendship. >> i have been thinking about this. when he came from america to england on visits, he used to ring from the airport and say the hitch s lded. >> rose: is that, would he call himself the hitch. >> yeah, oh yeah. >> it was self-conscious irony. >> and i would feel great excitement but also the sense that i am going to lose a chapter here you have knees amazing long lunches followed by a debach in the evening that would leave you incapacitated for three days and three nights. but he would go off, just as you had sorts of falling on your bedroom floor, we go off andwrte a piece. and i and his again rossities with time was

amazing. that he would give time. he was a person for whom the clock hands moved slower. his day was longer than ours. and his energy on your behalf which i experienced too was extraordinary. and we get on a plane and come and deal with it. >> yeah. >> and i just, if are you a novelist or a pote then are you going to spend allots of ti broing. and i think that's why hitch could not have been a novelist although he had the gift of phrase and of mimic ree and all the rest. but he wasn't a buddha, i don't think. >> none of that determines stupor. >> he was, he did -- >> determined stupor. >> denounced for not having the great novelists have the capacity for determined stupor. >> and christopher was n that sense he was a journalist. he had that sort of file your copy approach. and he would, as martin says,

we go home after a long day of drinking and know, and we write like 3,000 words and file them. >> or he would fall asleep in his apartment. >> and they would not be incoherent, they would be extraordinary words. >> that was one of his later utterances in writing was that he did burn the candle at both ends and said sometimes that gives off a lovely light. but by christ he did that. and in sort of preter natural way i thought. and i think knew that it contributed to the illness that camuponim. >> rose: if you had known that there was a possibility of getting cancer, you would never have smoked, you would never have smoked a cigarette, you would have never drank the or consumed the amount of liquor you consoled. >> no i think all the time i felt that life is a wager. and that i probably was getting more out of leading a bo hemmian existence as a writer than i would have if

i didn't. so and writing is what's important to me. and anything that helps me do at or enhances and prolongs and deepens and sometimes intensifies arguments and conversation is worth it to me. sure. so i was knowingly taking a risk. i wouldn't recommend it to others. >> but he believed that the cigarettes and the booze gave him what he called the kind of junk energy, junk energy. and that, and so in a sense he was under the impression that he needed, that he needed those tw substances. >> rose: he might not have written as much if he hadn't had that junk energy. >> as boosters. >> part of the tragedy is he was so robust. if he had been a little weaker cohave taken all that ij drug and smoking,.

for all the drink, he had one of the best memories of anyone. >> de have this incredible head for drink and i don't think it did him that much good. the body didn't give him enough warning signs. >> i think he sa but, jam, that somow aer that you awakened in him the far buried and dangerous lust for alcohol and nicotine. >> it was your fault. >> i know he often accused me of that. simply because i bought him a drink in 1967. i mean really seems a bit in excess of the fact. >> rose: i want to talk about two things. this nature of friendship. you and i have spoken about this before at this table, the notion of, i mean i think there was a quote in ichheyaidomething about he called the relationship he had with you the most retro sexual relationship that one young man could conceivably have with another. and you said at the same time it was unconsummated

gay marriage. >> martin. >> i didn't know was unconsummated. >> it was a civil partnership. >> (laughter) >> he tried to-- . >> rose: he tried to consummate it every now and then. >> well, he was sort of pan afftione. >> big kisses. >> yeah, tongues. >> yeah. >> it was-- too much information. >> rose: no it's not. >> this is a family show. >> and-- . >> rose: an idea show. >> you for example you say that he sorts of lays it in on wolf oowitz and we perhaps do it for an hour or two but he was the most egalitarian of socialists. >> rose: are you changing the subject, aren't you. >> we, i have no case to answer.

and he was very rude as we said and a talented hatedder. but socially his manners were impeccable. and completely democratic too. >> rose: may i just stay with this, one was that he cast himself as this smaller fish swimming alongside a great white shark. he did say that about you. now that had to do with, you know. >> the ladies. >> ro: the ladies. >>oh right, ght. he said he was a small fish casting along a great white shark speaking of you. >> well, he was incredibly unpredatory. >> rose: unpredatory. >> girl was often throw themselves at him. >> rose: for good reason. >> well, yeah. >> rose: he was attractive. >> very attractive. and. >> rose: brilliant. >> and what he-- his, what he would do to charm people was to turn his intelligence on them and show his intelligence am and that was his, that was his way of

attracting people. but he was very dissident. >> rose: but at the same time was he nicholas in your novel. >> yes. >> rose: so there was nicholas and you were keith and. >> yeah. >> rose: you know. >> up to a point, yeah. in as much as, you know, once there is a novel, the character changes to fit the novel. so it never is the person themselves. but therewasne-oryhat is in the novel, i thought was so great that i had to make a scene to give the punch line that hitch gave which was we were in one of these empty greek restaurants and two very upper-class young men came in. and they were fussing around with the waiters. and they had a terrible air about them as if they were, you know, stokley a waiting the death of elderly

relatives so that they could come into their patrimony. and they were fussing around, so much so that it was impsible fitch and me to start a conversation. and then one of them came and crouched down in front of us, and pouted up through his fringe and said they're obviously going ask us to move tables. he said you are going hate me for this. and hitch said i hate you already. >> rose: go ahead. >> and we moved tables quite-- and they sent over a terrified bottle of wine. and but but if you just sort of introduced him to your mother and your crazy aunt and so on, he would be absolutely impeccabl impeccable-- impeccable and gentle, socially. >> rose: let me ask this question about america. what did parker mean to him. because he obviously came here and became an american

citizen. >> i think he found his full voice, i think here. i think you know, because i mean as we heard in one of the clips you showed, i think he was actually very admiring of aspects of ameca, of its constitution. >> rose: and he became a naturallized citizen at the jefferson memorial. >> yeah. >> and he became even more of an american post 9/11. oy mean 9/11 was a turning point, a revamping of his love for the united states. if you went to see him in his apartment he would love to take straernings up on to the roof and point out the monument as if he had let them himself. he was very proprietorial t was his washington. >> and as he was saying on that clips, he was very moved by the american revolution. he ought this was relution that had worked. and i think he loved the fact that it is an immigrant society, and the diversity that follows. >> rose: in this book hitch 22 he writes about the first

three chapters in it and talks about actually this photograph in which i think he was described, i should give credit to the photographer. >> angela. >> you know. >> yes. >> o was described as the late christopher hitch ens which gave him or pvided for h or was an impetus for him or forced him or linked him to consider mortality. and then he sort of talks about there in its first three chapters here. so let's talk finally about sort of the end. and how he handled death and each of you visited him and saw him and talked to him so did i in terms of an interview. when i went to do the interview he was obviously not feeling well. i said we don't have to do this now. i will come back another time. he said nobody, i want to do it now. he had bucket next to him, you know, and he's talked about that too. i mean, and the evolution of

the conversation, it seems to me and correct me because you were a thousand times closer than i was, was from in terms of the illness was sort of metaphysical and then it became in his writings describing its physicality of it. and then perhaps somewhere else. >> at the very beginning of it, i mean when hitch 22 came out, its publication event was here at the 92nd streey and hi agreed t go and lob questions at him. you know. and so i did. and he was at his best, you know, he was at his, knocking them out of the park. >> hitchens best. >> exactly. and i wasn't just throwing softballs, you know there were a few curve balls in there. but he was brilliant, brilliant for at least an hour and then a bit more with the q &, and then afterwards there was a dinner for him and with a few friends and publishing people and so on. and he continued you know to just hold forthnd bet

is absolute speaknd then afterwards i discovered as we all did that that was the day. >> that morning. >> that morning he had been told about the cancer. and i just thought how do you do that? i mean i wouldn't be able to do that i don't think to go out in front of a thousand people and just perform brilliantly when you have just been given possibly terminal news. >> a death sentence. >> hmmmm. >> one way he dealt with death was to write so well about it. i mean remember those early pieces for "vanity fair", in his column, described really in terms of crossi a border, the border guards being the medics who greet you as you come across and suddenly you are in different clothes. and the land of the healthy that you leave behind, it was beautifully done at the very beginning. visiting him was, i mean we all went. it was not like visiting most others.

because he didn't want to talk about being ill. he wanted to talk about reading and what was going on and erything ee. and thehe ndedto sleep a lot. and he would like to find threw when he woke up. so the deal was he went to visit hitch take some books and works for the bed and wait a couple of hours until he comes around, empty his lungs, disgustingly and then resume. incredible app time. he really did not want to die. he really, i mean for all sorts of reasons but he really did hang on. >> i think going on writing until almost the very end was one of the ways of resistance i think it was one of the things that kept it going. >> i took a picture of him writing that last piece, sort of drips. if you think about if, it was painful to swallow, very difficult to breathe. his limbs ached, his arm hurt like crazy and he was facing eternal oblivion and he needed to get these 3,000

words done. >> he was determined to make a good end. >> that's right. >> and he had made a point of identifying himself as standing for a certain kind of rationality and that rationality in the face of death was the logical conclusion of whooo he had said we do. what he had set himself up as. and so it was, i think, i think everybody learned about hitch that, how extraoinarily lrge h audience was at that point. and how extraordinary he was that there was this audience that was concerned about, or part of the awe yens was saying well he repent. >> yes, because that, the

delight of the-- delightful for christopher. >> who knows. >> i would say oh no he wouldn't. >> there were people praying for him which was -- >> that's right. >> there were wrong thing to do. >> we also in a linked up tv program. >> i talked to him about that. you know people praying four, if we talk. >> do you remember all i that linked up program i was by his bedside, you were here and there was some event in london, but it was being piped to cinemas, movie houses all across, all sold out, from the hospital room. >> yeah. >> no, it was, on the stage. stephen frye, people on stage, we were going to get the linked up. christopher was sitting in the-- but what was so extraordinary was that the pele, there re cama mod acss the audience. the audience was mostly young. they mostly would disagree

with limb violently on iraq but they were turning up in these cinemas to hear him. >> or to hear talk about his own legacy and what he, at all. the sense of a life lived. a sense of, people talk about reading your own obituary. >> he must have read quite a few premature obituaris. there was one in the "new york times", 18 months or a year before. >> yes, there from a lot of people. >> they had to write that. >> i think james is write that he was determined to di well. and it's very hard to do. and how is it done. and who was it that said that it is very difficult for a sick man not to be a villain. and he was determined to buck that law not to be a villain or not to be weak. >> i mean, i saw him so sick sometimes that i thought i would just be whimpering with self-pitty. and he was determined not that. >> not to go ther

>> or not to go to gret o not to go to change. i am who i am and i am still who i am. >> that and just that there is no tougher challenge than to cope with death as fraud called it, the complex simple. the reason we have religion is because of death and how very difficult it to to come face-to-face with it. and religion says you needsant do that. we will postpone all that. andso itwas,e was living up to his courage. >> one of the things he most disliked about religion was the idea that if we are told that we have a life after death, it makes us not value or pay attention to the life we have. you know, if as it were a real life, happens with our, within our heavenly self when we are immortal, then

this life doesn't matter because it diminishes the value of actual lived human life. and i think christopher very much wanted to show that the value is here, you know, it's here, not afterwards. >> when was the last time you saw him. >> i saw him exactly one year ago today. i was in houston texas for his birthday. >> i guess it is only two or three weeks before he died. >> we were having a conversation about larkin and a couple of lies, and i knew i was to leave to go to the airport. we came to have that discussion and i went to kiss him and he said, just go, go, he didn't want age emotional parting. it was not a we will see each other soon, which is devastating as anything, just go, just go. >> i saw him die. >> you were there. >> and it was, i arrived and

it was sort of already all over. and he was unconscious. and you know, you go and hug him and talk to him. but i like odd to think he might have sensed m esee. and then it became, with the family, his children and wife and father-in-law and cousins, we just sat there. and five, six hours. and what happens is you look at him, and how labored his breathing is, then you look at the skreerning the monitor screen and you see the blood pressure changes every hour. because you can hear tha that-- coming on, dropping. and oxygenation and breath, the te of brehing until it just sank into nothing. tand it was-- i think we were all sitting by the phone, you know, there was a moment in the middle of the night when the phone rang

and it wasn't necessary to pick up the phone. i knew it, and it was very sad. >> james write the first line of the obituary for us. >> oh, to me was the spirit of '68. it was the revolutionary spirit that was so engaging and the source, i suppose, of many ridiculous things that were said and felt but many fine things too. >> rose: thank you, thank you martin, thank you james, thank you, ian. thank you. christopher hitchens, died age 62. we haveeen 63 today. one that loved him or hate him, you could not ignore him. because he said things with

such brilliance and insight and gift of language, never more powerful than when he was on stage, when there was an audience and a connection. a great program, here time after time as we talked about many subjects. thank you for joining us this evening. and appreciation of christopher hitchens. see you next time. ang ian't muster. really. because it's necessary that people die. it would be internal if people did not. people have to die in large numbers every day so as to make room. i'm leaving the party a bit earlier than i would like. much earlier than i would like. it looks as if i might have to leave quite a bit earlier. and not only that but the party will go on without me. even more horrible thought so why should i be enladies and gentlemened at that, that would be spiteful.

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