Editing Christopher Hitchens (section)

==Early life and education==
Hitchens was born in [[Portsmouth]], [[Hampshire]], the elder of two boys; his brother, [[Peter Hitchens|Peter]], became a [[Social conservatism|socially conservative]] journalist.<ref name=Wilby-2011/> Their parents, Commander Eric Ernest Hitchens (1909–1987) and Yvonne Jean Hitchens (née Hickman; 1921–1973), met in Scotland when serving in the [[Royal Navy]] during [[World War II]].<ref name="Hitchens-2010"/> His mother had been a Wren, a member of the [[Women's Royal Naval Service]].<ref name="Walsh-2010">{{cite news|first=John|last=Walsh|work=The Independent|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/hitch22-a-memoir-by-christopher-hitchens-1984845.html|title=Hitch-22: a memoir by Christopher Hitchens|date=27 May 2010|access-date=28 May 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100530030603/http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/hitch22-a-memoir-by-christopher-hitchens-1984845.html|archive-date=30 May 2010|url-status=live}}</ref> She was of [[Jewish]] origin, something that Hitchens discovered when he was 38; he thus came to identify as a Jew.<ref name="Gordon-2007">{{cite web|first=Meryl|last=Gordon|url=https://nymag.com/nymetro/news/media/features/868/|title=The Boy Can't Help It|work=NYMag.com|date=8 May 2007|access-date=30 September 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141001172127/http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/media/features/868/|archive-date=1 October 2014|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Tracy-2011">{{cite web|first=Marc|last=Tracy|url=https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/the-tenth-man-2|title=The Tenth Man|work=Tablet Magazine|date=19 December 2011|access-date=18 October 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160528063356/http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/86541/the-tenth-man-2|archive-date=28 May 2016|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Barber-2002a">{{cite news|first=Lynn|last=Barber|author-link=Lynn Barber|url=http://observer.guardian.co.uk/worldview/story/0,11581,683899,00.html|title=Look who's talking|work=The Observer|date=14 April 2002|access-date=1 June 2005|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071231024108/http://observer.guardian.co.uk/worldview/story/0,11581,683899,00.html|archive-date=31 December 2007|url-status=dead}}</ref>

Hitchens often referred to his father simply as 'the Commander'. Eric Hitchens was deployed on {{HMS|Jamaica|44|6}}, which took part in the sinking of the {{ship|German battleship|Scharnhorst||2|up=yes}} in the [[Battle of the North Cape]] on 26 December 1943. He paid tribute to his father's contribution to the war: "Sending a Nazi convoy-raider to the bottom is a better day's work than any I have ever done." Eric's naval career required the family to move from base to base throughout Britain and its colonies; including to [[Malta]], where Peter Hitchens was born in [[Sliema]] in 1951.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/news/national/14656/hitchens-death-and-the-malta-connection|title=Hitchens, death and the Malta connection|access-date=25 January 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190403092229/https://www.maltatoday.com.mt/news/national/14656/hitchens-death-and-the-malta-connection|archive-date=3 April 2019|url-status=dead}}</ref> Eric later worked as a bookkeeper for boatbuilders, speedboat manufacturers, and a prep school.<ref name="Hitchens-2010">{{cite web|last=Hitchens|first=Christopher|url=http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/features/2010/hitch22/the_commander_my_father_eric_hitchens.html|title=The Commander: My Father, Eric Hitchens|publisher=Slate.com|date=2 June 2010|access-date=14 April 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120415061656/http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/features/2010/hitch22/the_commander_my_father_eric_hitchens.html|archive-date=15 April 2012|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|last=Yglesias|first=Matthew|url=http://www.slate.com/id/2255781/entry/2255782|title=The Commander: My Father, Eric Hitchens|work=[[Slate (magazine)|Slate]]|date=20 October 2003|access-date=16 December 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110816133539/http://www.slate.com/id/2255781/entry/2255782/|archive-date=16 August 2011|url-status=live}}</ref>

Hitchens attended two private schools—[[Mount House School, Tavistock|Mount House School]], [[Tavistock, Devon|Tavistock]], Devon, from the age of eight, and the [[The Leys School|Leys School]] in [[Cambridge]].<ref name=Barber-2002/> Hitchens went up to [[Balliol College, Oxford]], in 1967 where he read [[philosophy, politics and economics]] and was tutored by [[Steven Lukes]] and [[Anthony Kenny]]. He graduated in 1970 with a [[third-class degree]].<ref name="Wilby-2011"/><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-16214335|title=Obituary: Christopher Hitchens|publisher=BBC|date=16 December 2011|access-date=21 June 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180727185452/https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-16214335|archive-date=27 July 2018|url-status=live}}</ref> In his adolescence, he was "bowled over" by [[Richard Llewellyn]]'s ''[[How Green Was My Valley]]'', [[Arthur Koestler]]'s ''[[Darkness at Noon]],'' [[Fyodor Dostoyevsky]]'s ''[[Crime and Punishment]]'', [[R. H. Tawney]]'s critique on ''Religion and the Rise of Capitalism'', and the works of [[George Orwell]].<ref name="Walsh-2010"/> In 1968, he took part in the TV quiz-show ''[[University Challenge]]''.{{efn|
What she [Yvonne] wanted was to see me represent [[Balliol College|Balliol]] on the [[University Challenge]] team, where I did actually make my first-ever television appearance.<ref name=Hitchens-2010-H22/>{{page needed|date=October 2024}}
}}<ref name=Hitchens-2010-H22>{{cite book |last=Hitchens |first=Christopher |date=May 2010 |title=[[Hitch-22]] |publisher=Atlantic Books |isbn=978-0-446-54033-9}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|first=Blake|last=Morrison|author-link=Blake Morrison|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/may/29/hitch-22-christopher-hitchens-review|title=I contain multitudes|work=[[The Guardian]]|date=29 May 2010|access-date=16 April 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160306044618/http://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/may/29/hitch-22-christopher-hitchens-review|archive-date=6 March 2016|url-status=live}}</ref>

In the 1960s, Hitchens joined the political left; drawn by disagreement over the [[Vietnam War]], nuclear weapons, racism, and oligarchy, including that of "the unaccountable corporation".<ref>{{Cite book|title=Christopher Hitchens and His Critics : Terror, Iraq, and the Left|publisher=New York University Press|year=2008|isbn=978-0814716861|editor-last=Cottee|editor-first=Simon|editor-link=Simon Cottee|location=New York, London|page=168|oclc=183392372|editor-last2=Cushman|editor-first2=Thomas}}</ref> He expressed affinity with the politically charged counter-cultural and protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s. He avoided the recreational drug-use of the time, saying "in my cohort we were slightly anti-hedonistic&nbsp;... it made it very much easier for police provocation to occur, because the planting of drugs was something that happened to almost everyone one knew."<ref name="Robinson-2007">{{cite web|first=Peter|last=Robinson|url=http://www.hoover.org/multimedia/uk/3420306.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070915092414/http://www.hoover.org/multimedia/uk/3420306.html|archive-date=15 September 2007|publisher=Hoover Institution|title=You said you wanted a revolution: 1968 and the Counter-Counterculture (Peter Robinson interview with William Buckley Jr and Christopher Hitchens)|date=15 September 2007|access-date=12 October 2012}}</ref> Hitchens was inspired to become a journalist after reading a piece by [[James Cameron (journalist)|James Cameron]].<ref name=Barber-2002>{{cite news|last=Barber|first=Lynn|author-link=Lynn Barber|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/apr/14/politics|title=Look who's talking|work=The Observer|date=14 April 2002|access-date=30 June 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190410124847/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/apr/14/politics|archive-date=10 April 2019|url-status=live}}</ref>

Hitchens was [[bisexuality|bisexual]] during his younger days; and joked that as he aged, his appearance "declined to the point where only women would go to bed with [him]".<ref name="Aitkenhead-2010">{{cite web|first=Decca|last=Aitkenhead|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/may/22/christopher-hitchens-decca-aitkenhead|publisher=The Guardian|title=Christopher Hitchens: 'I was right and they were wrong'|work=Decca Aitkenhead|date=21 May 2010|access-date=26 January 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130624142037/http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/may/22/christopher-hitchens-decca-aitkenhead|archive-date=24 June 2013|url-status=live}}</ref> He said he had sexual relations with two male students at Oxford who would later become government ministers during the [[premiership of Margaret Thatcher]], although he would not reveal their names publicly.<ref name="Aitkenhead-2010"/>

Hitchens joined the [[Labour Party (UK)|Labour Party]] in 1965, but<!--The following is a cited quote from one of Hitchens's own articles; please do not cut or qualify the word "contemptible". --> along with the majority of the [[Labour Students|Labour students' organisation]] was expelled in 1967, because of what Hitchens called "Prime Minister [[Harold Wilson]]'s contemptible support for the war in Vietnam".<ref>{{cite news|first=Christopher|last=Hitchens|url=http://www.slate.com/id/2117328/|title=Long Live Labor – Why I'm for Tony Blair|work=[[Slate (magazine)|Slate]]|date=25 April 2005|access-date=16 April 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110831133955/http://www.slate.com/id/2117328/|archive-date=31 August 2011|url-status=live}}</ref> Under the influence of [[Peter Sedgwick]], who translated the writings of the Russian revolutionary and Soviet dissident [[Victor Serge]], Hitchens forged an ideological interest in [[Trotskyism]] and [[Anti-Stalinist left|anti-Stalinist]] socialism.<ref name="Walsh-2010"/> Shortly after, he joined "a small but growing post-Trotskyist [[Luxemburgism|Luxemburgist]] sect", the [[International Socialists (UK)|International Socialists]].<ref name="Hithens-2005">{{cite web|first=Christopher|last=Hithens|url=https://www.pbs.org/heavenonearth/interviews_hitchens.html|title=Heaven on Earth – Interview with Christopher Hitchens|publisher=PBS|date=1 January 2005|access-date=1 January 2006|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060612210516/http://www.pbs.org/heavenonearth/interviews_hitchens.html|archive-date=12 June 2006|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|last=Wilby|first=Peter|date=1 September 2017|title=Hitchens, Christopher Eric (1949–2011)|url=https://www.oxforddnb.com/|access-date=7 December 2023|website=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography|archive-date=26 September 2004|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040926035703/http://www.oxforddnb.com/|url-status=live}}</ref> Hitchens recruited [[James Fenton]] to the International Socialists.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Hitchens|first=Christopher|title=Hitch-22: A Memoir|publisher=Atlantic Books|year=2010|isbn=9781838952334|location=London|pages=144}}</ref>