Stephen Fry & Friends on the Life of Christopher Hitchens

good evening ladies and gentlemen good evening and welcome to what I hope will be an extraordinary evening and a very surprising evening despite it naturally beginning on a disappointing note and that is that Krista isn't physically with us you'd be pleased to know that he is actually watching this event and he will be very pleased to hear them with him is his wife Carol and one of his great friends Ian McEwan the novelist amongst his many many features one of them is a genius for friendship as we will discover but I'm delighted to welcome you all to the Southbank centers Royal Festival oh yeah you will be I'll tell you who you'll be hearing from and it won't surprise you if you know anything about Christopher you'll be hearing from Martin Amos you'll be hearing yes the man himself you'll be hearing from Christopher Buckley from James Fenton from Salman Rushdie and here in this theatre I'll be talking to emeritus professor Richard Dawkins and that's very exciting at eleventh hour edition a remarkable man a remarkable artist remarkable actor who's a huge huge admirer of Christopher as I can tell everyone in this room is and we're hoping through the joys of Google+ hangout to have a conversation with Sean Penn so first of all I just got a few words to say about Christopher Eric Hitchens yes his middle name really is Eric maybe a comic named was now but it's a was the name of his father and B of course was the first name of a writer polemicist essayist and political thinker on whom Christopher's written a book and from whom he can write the claim descendency and influenced Eric Blair his pen name of course was George Orwell you can call Christopher hitch you might call him the age you can addressed him as mr. Hitchens or Christopher but if you wish to emerge from his presence unscathed don't even think of calling him Chris I have to explain why it's me here why did I here introducing this evening and evening during which Christopher and I was scheduled to shoot the breeze him in in Washington DC and myself here I can't claim to call him a friend with anything like the depth of meaning that several of the people were going to hear from this evening can but I can at least claim the privilege of having debated with him by his side pay on why and here in London for intelligence squared and and I can claim to that we call each other old horse like Stanley Ukridge or old crumpet like Barney Phipps or oofy prosser for we share a love and a great passion for the works of P G Woodhouse and such things form a bond the first thing I want to disabuse you of is the notion that Christopher is an earnest and humorless political and and after the sanctimonious figure as his sometimes painted he has fought for all kinds of causes all his life he stood up against bullies his outrage those who assumed he was a natural ally he has poured all his energies talents and enthusiasms in a thousand directions but always always with wit with panache with a sumptuously exquisite use of language with a deep understanding that the connection between style and substance is absolute a true thing badly expressed is a lie Christopher has opened up debate given voice to ideas and causes that without his talents would have been less ventilated and less understood he's done so from a position of learning and understanding that earns the accolade no matter how unloved and forlorn it is in anglo-saxon nations of intellectual like me he's Jewish on his mother's side the side that counts like me he's busy and productive but unlike me he is not a cheap well I thank you for that applause I say that I'm actually quite an expensive and I like to think I'm a good boy because I kiss but I am I am way out of Christopher's major-league almost everybody is it's no accident that the great associations in his life which he was at the absolute center of one of the most remarkable talented and tight circle of friends in British cultural life in the last 50 years who are all distinguished not only by their supreme intelligence their speed of wit their range of learning and breadth of knowledge but also quite simply at the very level of the sentence by their miraculous ability to put one word after another in the service of poetry the essay the novel criticism story or political screed certainly was committed traveller protester pamphleteer propagandist for the far left a Trotskyist an international Brigadier of the old school traveling from Cyprus to Cambodia from Cuba to Paris Hassan wetab an old-fashioned hard left vulture dissident and descent sir it's somehow Christopher has emerged I once says the most important member of that group would that be a meaninglessly chief and pointless thing to say but as a very very surprisingly influential and important figure of our times he has become in the words of Willy Loman someone of a he's torn into sacred cows like Mother Teresa Princess Diana he's horrified many of his apparently natural liberal left allies with his attacks on Clinton his fervent support for the war in Iraq and he's risen to the top of many little black books of revenge thanks to his bravura attacks on religionists spiritual snake oil salesmen established churches but risen he certainly has to a point of Fame adulation and attention that I think has surprised no one more than himself so what we're here perhaps most of all to celebrate is that someone in this cultural desert of celebrity worship counter enlightenment malice and revealed Scripture tyranny someone has shown that there is still in this world especially amongst the intelligent and curious young a furious appetite for ideas for knowledge for thought and for the questioning of authority for being in the word from one of his best books a contrarian in that sense Christopher Hitchens can read could be described as a hero not of the left or of the neocon right not of libertarianism or of liberal humanism but a hero of the mind but he's certainly my hero and thanks to technology we will now be able to hear I hope I very much will be able to hear from others who would mind to and so I'm gonna go and sit in that chair there and pray that the might of Google has allowed a miracle to take place so watch me pay mm-hmm oh look there's Sean hooray Sean Penn welcome and thank you very much for joining us can you hear clearly yes a fantastic I know it's morning in Los Angeles where you are and as you know it's evening and the night is closing in in London and I know you admire Christopher Chin's enormously and there are many many reasons why one might and I believe I believe that one of the reasons you admire amis is for the extraordinary if you like ferocity and ultimately validated truth of his attack on one of the most powerful men in American history and that is Henry Kissinger is that is that how you first came across Christopher as a as a polemicist who attacked Kissinger yes it was his book the child of Henry Kissinger that really focus my attention on his work and then followed also by a kind of the Magnificent magnificence of his language was I think particularly in spiration to those of us in America who have undervalued it and then the clarity of his thought I think made him a particular particularly sharp knife in the cutting of Kissinger who I think the original title of the book and Chris's mine was Henry portrait of a serial killer that was not appreciated by publishing but I think what Kissinger was confronted with with the Christopher Hitchens was somebody who was not distracted by a the intelligence of Kissinger or his articulation his Kris could more than match it and had a clarity of a kind of pure and unencumbered morality that saw what Kissinger's motivations were in a way that was unequivocal yes and of course Kissinger attempted to sue Christopher didn't he and that we are so pleased to see smoking by the way it is it's it's a magnificent sight it would be far less shocking to most audiences if you took your penis out on stage so congratulations for doing that and Christopher is more than a rhetorician he does have to do that thing and this is one of the reasons I admire me has to do that thing called work where you actually have to find out facts you have to route all around and you have to get them right because the cost of getting them wrong is enormous especially in America it's a lawsuit it's a lawsuit that can ruin you and the side of Christopher that perhaps people don't understand because it's the side they naturally never see they see they see the the famous slightly shambling drinker and smoker who adorned so many platforms and made so many debates and and and what's so extraordinary in his ability to speak perfectly without notes was so absolutely unbeatable in debate possibly the greatest debater since demosthenes and what they don't see is the man alone in his library or the man chasing sources the man making sure that every word he writes is not only beautifully written but it's beautifully researched and and that is that is why it books like the Kissinger book still bear reading time and time again because they're kind of unarguable amongst the causes for which he is known there is one perhaps which Springs most readily to people's lips and that is that is if you like the he noticed before many of us did that the tide of the Enlightenment was being rolled back quite deliberately and so he is very well known for amongst other things he's extraordinary but God is not great our religion poisons everything and perhaps the best-known even better known than Christopher for such a thing is the emeritus professor for the understanding of science from Oxford University who let us not forget it is one of the great evolutionary biologists today and I'm about to introduce him on stage now Professor Richard Dawkins most advanced piece of a feather well Richard in a sense would it be fair to say that that your anger at religion is not so much the prime cause of your life it's just simply did you found it was getting in the way of a free education of free thinking yes I think my anger probably like Christopher's is somewhat exaggerated and it's exaggerated because people who are very devoted to religion when they hear any kind of criticism however mild they think it's angry I think the reason is they're so unused to it that even if relatively mild criticism a criticism that would sound mild if it was a criticism of a piece of theatre or a restaurant or something if its religion it sounds angry so I think that's exaggerated I mean I to the extent that I am angry I think possibly my anger would be slightly different from Christopher's in that he I suppose is angry because he sees the tyrannical God figure as a sort of dictator a kind of North Korea horror figure I'm sort of guessing there whereas in my case I think it's sort of educational I feel that the subversion of young minds teaching them the the second-rate explanation for the existence of themselves and the universe as opposed to the real one given that the real one is so enthralling and fascinating it's just so tawdry and so second-rate to FOB them off with supernaturalism so that that to the extent that I am angry that's probably the main source of it yeah surprisingly I think it was Yasser Arafat who said that the history of most of the Wars of the world is quarrels over who's invisible friend was more power I suppose you will continue to get hate mail I know Christopher has had the weird experience of having to decide which is weird the the people who are praying for him not not necessarily even to get better but to find faith in his moment of physical illness all those who are gloating that he will roast for eternity in the hell I think they're about equal in numbers aren't they I wonder whether when they say I'll pray for you he gives that wonderful reply I'll think for you brilliant we have now someone who is of kind of great dynasty in America his father is probably well known as one of the most conservative spokesmen and figures of the 50:16 70s particularly famous for his coming to blows with gore Vidal on many occasions on television and his son has turned out to be one of the great comic writers of his time and had a bit of a falling out with his beloved father although there were different political persuasions he wrote a famous essay saying something I think it was called something like sorry dad but I'm voting for Obama and he's a friend of Christopher's and he's a he's a quite quite wonderful writer in a common theme for the evening from the great smoker Christopher Hitchens to the great smoker as we now know Shaun 10 we come to the author of thank you for smoking Christopher Buckley hello Christopher how are you hello Steven hello London and hello Christopher now you know something about the the world of doctrinal politics in America better than most because as I say you come from a family and your father was that was a very well-known very well respected also very well feared as spokesman for the right and his name forever coupled with Gore Vidal's as as justing and through the 60s and you yourself have have been a much gentler figure but you like Christopher and I think it's a sign that I want to reiterate about Christopher our comic writer and Christopher is one of the wittiest writers in English as well as sometimes one of the most savage and will you agree with that absolutely agree with that I as a footnote it was my father who I believe gave Christopher his first exposure on American television and three years ago Christopher made a heroic effort to attend my father's funeral Mass at st. Patrick's he flew in from Grand Rapids Michigan I think grabbed the last seat but then found himself in the awkward position of being in the in the same church as Henry Kissinger and that's one of the other villagers at my father's funeral mass so he he records in his marvelous book hich 22 how he ducked out onto the into a rain swept Fifth Avenue to have a cigarette so that he would not be counted as having been among Henry Kissinger's audience I suppose part of the part of the splendor Christopher's life is the way he mixes with politics and considering he was someone of the hard left the hard left were always were always taken to be those figures who could weep for the masses but had no ability as it were to care for individuals where he was never like that do you think there is a word for Christopher's politics well that they Christopher when I first knew him in the early 80s when he came down to Washington and to cover the Falklands crisis I was working for as a speechwriter for George Herbert Walker Bush or the good Bush over there and Christopher at that time was a very hard leftist he wrote for all the all the the very left-wing publications he was a correspondent for the nation and but he has such a supple and with the bow to Professor Dawkins if I may use the term evolutionary mind that he made a rather interesting trajectory through the years so that he he he became in the early part of the last decade of the last century one of the one of the great proponents of US military invention in Iraq it's been it's it's been it's been quite a quite a quite a spectacle to watch but Christopher has has never no one who would ever accuse him of having been dull he is usually well if I may say he Christopher was the Rick Blaine of Washington I refer of course to the Humphrey Bogart character in the movie Casablanca everyone went to the hitches he famously in the I guess it was the first years of the Clinton administration threw a party at his flat in Washington for after the White House Correspondents Dinner and it became the it was the Vanity Fair party and everyone came and it got so big after two or three years that it had to move to a rather interesting venue write it directly across the street the Russian Trade Federation which was an odd place to have a Rick's Cafe but you I I mean everyone came I on one memorable memorable occasion I I got to Barbra Streisand caught fire quite literally by standing a little bit too close to a to a candle and she really the world was on the verge of losing Barbra Streisand miss Parsons politics in my own are very divergent or perhaps discrepant to use a hit hit Chuncheon word but I was I was one of the first responders in the bhindi Barbra Streisand self-immolation you know that's my little footnote in history we have many other reasons too Thank You Christopher but it's been extremely enjoyable and and thank you for taking the time and bless you and bye-bye thank you very much now give me one I do my best to check to see um without giving away too many secrets you know how how technically advanced Christopher and his wife are by the fact that they both have an AOL address I know it's just talked about it's like Lady Bracknell the unfashionable side of the square I tried to persuade blues Carol Carol who's his wife to see if she could use an instant messaging system that they don't seem too immense to do that she did say you might even try and text me so I'm assuming we've got any words of wisdom yet from here on my thing yes oh yes that she's chosen email which is really good we've got we've got contributions yes that the games begin it starts and these are being typed by Ian McEwan because apparently his fingers are better so and this is from he and I talked until late last night with it we were discussing the non-communist left of the early 50s you can't run a mile just now but be reassured the world's ROIs mind is purring smoothly which is a very good line there from Ian McEwan now I'm going to introduce someone who I've admired and I wish I could say I knew I know him through his poetry I think we are lucky to be living in a time when there are still great poet Seamus Heaney is still with us and I do believe that the greatest English poet alive is James Fenton he is simply remarkable if you don't know his work is the most it's as accessible as Philip Larkin as deep as Eliot or any poet you wish it to be it's as long-lasting and as refreshing to the mind as purcha can be it is absolutely perfect he has been one of Christopher's closest friends for the longest possible time since their Oxford days as undergraduates and he is in New York so we want to say hello if we can - James Fenton hello James I've spoken a little about the extraordinary sodality the the group that you form with Martin and Ian and drive James and Salman and Christopher a group of friends have stayed together in a way that is really quite extraordinary inspiring I wish I could say I knew anyone in my generation who had an equivalent and it's not only the strength of your friendship it is also the quite astounding depth of all of your individual talents when this evening was planned and create and Christopher knew that he wasn't going to be able to take part one of the things that he was very excited about was the possibility of you reading a poem and I know we all love to hear that and yes which one have you chosen and you suggested it as the skip the skip which was my favorite he's the one that Christopher suggested good we'd love to hear it well then I'll read it and I just say before I do so what I always say in America I know that I'm talking to you in England but in America we say that a skip is a dumpster the skip I I took my life and threw it on the skip reckoning the next-door neighbors wouldn't mind if my life hitched a lift to the council tip with their dry rotten rubble what you find with skips is the whole community joins in old mattresses appear doors kind of drift along with all that won't fit in the bin and stuff the binman can't be fished to shift I throw away my life and there it lay and grew quite sudden what a dreadful shame clucked some old bag and sucked her teeth the way the young these days no values me I blame but I blamed no one quality control had Loused it up and that was that nuff said I couldn't stick at home I took a stroll and passed the skip and left my life for dead without my life the beer with justice foul the landlord still as filthy as his wife the chicken in the basket was an owl and no one said he Jem lad Worth Lee life well I got back that night the worse for wear but still just capable of single vision looked in the skip my life it wasn't there some buggered nicked it without my permission okay so I got angry and began to shout and woke the street okay okay and I was sick all down the neighbours van and I disgraced myself on the parkade and then you know how if you've had a few your wake at dawn all healthy like sea breezes raring to go and thinking clever you you got away with it and then oh Jesus it hits you well that morning just at 6:00 I woke got up and looked down at the skip there lay my life still sodden on the bricks they're lame a poor old life ass overtip or was it mine still dressed I went downstairs and took a long cool look the truth was dawning someone had just exchanged my life for theirs poor fool I thought I should have left a warning some bastard saw my life and thought it nicer than what he'd had yet what he'd had seemed fine he never caught his fingers in the slicer the way I'd managed with that life of mine his life lay glistening in the rain neglected but still a decent an authentic life some people I can think of I reflected would take that thing as soon as you'd say knife it seemed a shame to miss a chance like that I brought the life in dried it by the stove it looked so fetching stretched out on the mat I tried it on it fitted like a glove and now when some local bat drops off the twig a new folk take the house and pull up floors and knock down walls and hire some kind of big container say a skip for their old doors I'll watch it like a hawk and everyday I make at least Oh half a dozen trips I've furnished an existence in that way you'd not believe the things you find on skips thank you very much Jen Fenton the wonderful games Benjamin thank you very much thank you now the person we're next going to speak to is in my opinion aside from being a really great writer I think his place in Christopher's life may be an explanation for some of the some of the ways that Christopher's politics changed and and that is the man he defended so brilliantly when quite uncle is shamefully so many on the Left refused to come forward and defend him and that is the man who for years had to hide with a threat of death on him for writing a book a book which if you haven't gone back to reread it he's a marvelous marvelous novel he continues to write marvelous novels he continues to be the one only Salman Rushdie hello Salma it's wonderful to see you here there's a as not making this an Oxford and Cambridge fight because of course Christian was both having gone to school in Cambridge in them University in Oxford but there's a Cambridge tradition which is very marked by the hard left which might be said to be represented by the philosopher GE Moore and by the Bloomsbury group and and in particular by the writer e/m Forster and that is the count of personal relations and there's a famous line of foresters which is if you came to a choice between betraying my friend or betraying my country I hope I would have the guts to betray my country and that if you like was the starting point of that culture personal relations as you know and I've often wondered that if the Satanic Verses had been written by someone who wasn't an incredibly close friend of Christopher do you think he would have been activated in quite the way he was in other words was your friendship a part of you know a part of the proof that he wasn't all hard left that there was a part of him that was also just a little bit Bloomsbury you know I think probably he'd have reacted exactly the same way because I think what what got up his nose was the idea that you know an aging prelate in an in an antique land could sentence to death a writer across the world for the crime of writing a book I think he just was something he couldn't countenance and but I do think that what happened then was that his friendship with me drove him to become the most extraordinary ally and help her in those hard times I mean I remember when after many years or many when a very long period of effort we managed to arrange partly with Christopher's help a meeting with President Clinton actually was staggered Christopher's house left from to his house to go to the meeting which was on the day before Thanksgiving and on the day before Thanksgiving the president the United States always has to ceremonially pardon a turkey one turkey Tom the turkey is pardoned all the others are killed yeah I was going to be seeing Clinton immediately before the pardoning of the turkey and so we imagined the possible headline of the newspapers the next day which was which was at Clinton pardons Turkey University gets stuffed however as it happens the meeting was quite successful and I remembered that George Stephanopoulos then an aide of Clinton's who had been very helpful was so excited when the meeting took place that he called Christopher at his house and said the eagle has landed so Christopher was very very much at the heart of that struggle and I've always been I've been grateful to him is understating what I feel and also his fury was not just towards towards as you rightly say an aging cleric in an antique land but also towards quite a startling number of writers in Britain and America who were very blacks in coming forward in what seems to me so clear-cut a case there were people who said I've read the book and don't think it's very good as if that might be a reason why you should be killed there were there were others who said that because you were yourself have a left left inclination it was an outrage that the police should defend you and I think it was as much his fury the lack of defense from others as as from the fact where itself is that a fair analysis yeah I think that's I think that so I've been from for me that just the main memory of those years is that is that Christopher was always there when I needed him you know one of the things I learned in those years is that is the meaning of a friend in need you know and Christopher was a you know transcendent example of that he was therefore whenever I needed him for whatever I needed him for and if we thought he was just to do both with his principles and the way in which he felt those principles were offended by the attack on on my book but also by his you know as we know from his memoir his enormous gift for personal friendship exactly and I was gonna returned his memoir hich 22 when he first as it were introduces you it might come as surprise to those who don't have the privilege of knowing you that what almost the first thing that impressed you had pressed him about you with your facility with words and the fun and games you had with words can you take us through some of those some of your particular games are used well well Christopher you know is a very funny man and we did invent one or two sort of ridiculous word games well the perhaps of what I could share with you is the one about titles that don't quite make it and examples of this would be a farewell to weapons for whom the bell rings mr. Vargo to kill a havoc to to kill a hummingbird the catcher in the catcher in the wheat Melville's great masterpiece Toby dick etc this is it these were games that we played Martin had a Marty but he had a more obscene game but there was hit there well there was the game about hysterical sex where you replaced the word love in the titles of things with the phrase hysterical sex that gives you hysterical sex in the Time of Cholera hysterical sex is a many-splendored thing all you need is hysterical sake and so on fun to be had it is that all those people those young people I mean not one not one of them a leader in their in their field novelists and I'll of those word games and another one that I remember they played was to substitute the word dick for heart so my dick is like a red red rose will you be my sweetie I think I hope straight away to the center of the sodality at least according to James Fenton and that is one of the great novelists of our times also a great assess of our times and of course one Christopher's greatest friends Martin Amos are you there margin hello you stayed friends throughout a long period of history and in which you all became such extraordinary successful people and that just two years ago there was an exhibition of photographs because you were engaged for a few years - and - the Gorgas the photographer who was a friend of you all I think we've got some of the pictures from the National Portrait Gallery acts exhibition here here's one with Angela and hitch in this photograph we see Angela Gorgas living up to her nickname of Angela sorry gorgeous - looking handsomer than any man has the right to be with a baguette in his top pocket instead of her the next picture is called hitch and his is a portrait I think and there he is absurdly handsome and the hair on his chest is actually grown up to his throat that you could have a long lunch with hitch which would turn into a long dinner and then as you went to bed at 4 o'clock in the morning reconciled to a hangover that would last a half a week you'd wake up and with a groan 12 hours late and find that hitch had written to 3,000 work pieces about John Locke and John Stuart Mill this was one of the most galling things about him he could hold his drink and sometimes he'd stay up all night and then go into a TV program with Germaine Greer and Norman Mailer but it wasn't on that occasion that he staggered up to Norman Mailer and in his own description stinking drunk he was pitch he said he lurched and burping up to Norman Mailer and said I read that interview where you said that that I am Martin eNOS and Ian Hamilton former homosexual cleek in the London literary world and he said and I just want you to know that I think that's very unfair to Ian Hamilton and birthing off thinking that didn't turn out quite as I wanted it well of course there is there is the eternal mystery which will join the mysteries that Thomas Brown mentioned in you know that we will never know what to name Achilles took when he went among women and we will never know the song the siren sang and we will never know the names of the two men in the Conservative government whom Hitchens bedded when he was a young undergraduate but I I don't expect you to give the game away but it's an intriguing game that will be played forever but you can see why they bedded him because he was a rather a beauty and the other picture here again with cigarette but most surprisingly with a brace of business and it's entitled of all things hitch on the Rothschild estate we we agreed that the idea that the Bollinger Bolshevik was inherently hypocritical had to be kicked out why should why should only right-wing people be able to enjoy champagne and Christopher very much real ished the high and the low but I would like to tell this little story about I think shows how he felt about class we were in a restaurant a tiny restaurant there were two elegant decadent young men interminably and unag Nora bleah badgering the staff to have rearranged the tables to so that they could accommodate the large party they accepted we were middle bohemian they were minor gentry I would say and they had that that look of those of people who who await with epic calm the deaths of elderly relatives and one of these young men came up and just swooped swooped down in an elegant crouch in front of Christopher and me and he's obviously going to ask us to move tables and he pout it up through his fringe and said after a flirtatious pause you're going to hate for this the Christmas said we hate you already wonderful you two have joined us not in any thank you very much I want to end by thanking all the contributors from around from Los Angeles our short glimpse of Sean Penn and his cigarette and and and all of Christopher's friends for Richard who took a train from Sheffield I believe where you were just to be here tonight and for all of you for coming even though you knew that the real hero was not going to be present I did speak to him on the telephone before I came on stage his voice was hoarse but excited he is thrilled that this evening happened and I know that on behalf of him and his wife he would want me to thank you all very warmly for coming and for allowing us to have it's not really the kind of thing I do very well this kind of television presentation and speaking to delayed satellites but you've all been unbelievably kind and supportive and thank you very much indeed all I can say about you

Channel: Intelligence Squared

Views: 1,299,521

Rating: 4.8702683 out of 5

Keywords: Stephen Fry, Christopher Hitchens, Sean Penn, Richard Dawkins, Salman Rushdie, Christopher Buckley, Martin Amis, James Fenton, Christianity, Catholic Church, Atheist, Atheism, Christopher Hitchens Death, Intelligence Squared, Debate, great oratory, Intelligence Squared debate, top debates, best debates, intelligencesquared, intelligent squared, debate, interesting debates, richard dawkins, intelligence squared 2019, intelligence squared hitchens, debate highlights

Id: taOBFURZvcA

Length: 45min 44sec (2744 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 22 2011