Twelve may refer to:

12 (number), the number

12, the year

12: The Elements of Great Managing, a bestselling business book by Rodd Wagner and James K. Harter

''Twelve'' (novel), 2002 novel by Nick McDonell

''Twelve'' (film), 2010 film based on the 2002 novel

''12'' (film), 2007 film by Russian director and actor Nikita Mikhalkov

''Twelve'' (Myracle novel), a 2007 novel by Lauren Myracle

''Twelve'' (Patti Smith album), 2007

Twelve (publisher), an imprint of Grand Central Publishing

Twelve (''Street Fighter''), a video game character from the ''Street Fighter'' series

''Twelve'', a 2009 novel by Jasper Kent

See also

The Twelve (disambiguation)

Quorum of the Twelve, a priesthood body established by Joseph Smith, Jr. as part of the Latter Day Saint movement

December, the 12th month of a year

az:12 (dəqiqləşdirmə) cs:Dvanáct de:Twelve es:Twelve fa:۱۲ (ابهام‌زدایی) fr:Twelve it:Twelve ht:12 (menm non) ku:12 lv:12 (nozīmju atdalīšana) nl:Twelve ru:12 (значения) ur:12 (ضد اب�?ام)

Coordinates	45°30′″N73°40′″N
name	Rory Culkin
birth name	Rory Hugh Culkin
birth date	July 21, 1989
birth place	New York City
occupation	Actor
yearsactive	1993–present }}

Rory Hugh Culkin (born July 21, 1989) is an American actor and is the younger brother of actors Macaulay Culkin and Kieran Culkin.

Personal life

Culkin was born in New York City, the son of Patricia Brentrup and Christopher 'Kit' Culkin, a former stage actor with a long career on Broadway. Culkin is the youngest of seven children; he has four brothers: Shane Arliss Culkin (born 1976), Macaulay Carson Culkin (born 1980), Kieran Kyle Culkin (born 1982), and Christian Patrick Culkin (born 1987), and two sisters: Dakota Ulissa Culkin (1978–2008) and Quinn Kay Culkin (born 1984). Culkin is the nephew of actress Bonnie Bedelia, who is his father's sister.

Career

Culkin began acting by playing alongside his elder brothers, among them Macaulay and Kieran, often as the younger versions of their characters. He first appeared in a photograph as a baby in ''The Good Son'', then as Young Richie in ''Ri¢hie Ri¢h (1994)'' (Richie being played by his brother Macaulay) and in 2002 played 10-Year-Old Igby in ''Igby Goes Down'' (Igby was played by his older brother Kieran).

Culkin's breakthrough role was in ''You Can Count On Me'', opposite Laura Linney, a role for which he received much praise and a Young Artist Award. Since then, Culkin has appeared in numerous films, ''Signs'' being the most famous, in which he starred alongside Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix. As a teenager, Rory started moving into more independent films, such as ''The Chumscrubber'' and ''Down in the Valley''. He took a leading role in ''Mean Creek'', a 2004 independent film about a group of teenagers that plan to get revenge on a bully. The entire youth cast won an Independent Spirit Award for this film. Since his Young Artist Award win for ''You Can Count on Me'', Culkin has received three more nominations. He also had a guest role in the ''Law & Order: Special Victims Unit'' episode "Manic", and in an episode of the ''Twilight Zone'' called "Azoth the Avenger Is a Friend of Mine" alongside Patrick Warburton. In May 2010, Culkin was cast for the slasher film ''Scream 4'', which was released in April 2011.

Filmography

''Richie Rich (film) ''You Can Count on Me'' ''Off Season'' ''Signs (film) ''It Runs in the Family (2003 film) ''Mean Creek'' ''The Zodiac (film) ''The Night Listener (film) ''Chasing 3000'' ''Lymelife'' ''Twelve (film) ''Scream 4''

Year !! Title !! Role !! Notes
1993	The Good Son (film)>The Good Son''
1994	Richie Rich'' ||	Young Richie
2000	|	Rudy Prescott
2001	|	Jackson Mayhew
rowspan="2"	2002	Signs'' ||	Morgan Hess
''Igby Goes Down''	10-Year-Old Igby
2003	It Runs in the Family'' ||	Eli Gromberg
2004	|	Sam Merric	limited release
rowspan="3"	2005	The Zodiac'' ||	Johnny Parish
''The Chumscrubber''
''Down in the Valley (film)	Down in the Valley''	Lonnie
2006	The Night Listener'' ||	Pete D. Logand
2008	|	Roger
2009	|	Scott
2010	Twelve'' ||	Chris
rowspan="2"	2011	|	Charlie Walker
''Hick (2011 film)	Hick''	Clement

References

External links

Category:1989 births Category:Actors from New York Category:American child actors Category:American people of Irish descent Category:American film actors Category:Living people Category:People from New York City

da:Rory Culkin de:Rory Culkin es:Rory Culkin fa:ر�?ری کالکین fr:Rory Culkin id:Rory Culkin it:Rory Culkin nl:Rory Culkin pt:Rory Culkin ru:Калкин, Рори fi:Rory Culkin sv:Rory Culkin

Coordinates	45°30′″N73°40′″N
name	Chace Crawford
birth name	Christopher Chace Crawford
birth date	July 18, 1985
birth place	Lubbock, Texas, U.S.
yearsactive	2006–present
occupation	Actor, model
website	}}

Christopher Chace Crawford (born July 18, 1985) is an American actor. He plays the role of Nate Archibald in ''Gossip Girl'' on The CW.

Early life

Crawford was born in Lubbock and raised in Plano, Texas. His father, Chris, is a dermatologist, and his mother, Dana, is a teacher. He also has a younger sister, former beauty queen Candice Crawford. He lived in Bloomington, Minnesota for four years and then graduated high school from Trinity Christian Academy. After high school, he moved to Malibu, California, to attend Pepperdine University, where he studied broadcast journalism. He struggled to identify a career path, vacillating among advertising, business, and communications majors.

Career

In 2007, Crawford landed the role of Nate Archibald on The CW's ''Gossip Girl''.

Crawford played British singer Leona Lewis's boyfriend in the video for her song "I Will Be". The video was released in January 2009. The same year, Crawford was named "Summer's Hottest Bachelor" by ''People''. He has also done a public service announcement for Do Something's Teens for Jeans campaign.

Crawford signed on to play a lead role as a drug dealer named White Mike in the film ''Twelve'', directed by Joel Schumacher. The film, based on Nick McDonell's novel of the same name, premiered at Sundance Film Festival on January 31, 2010.

Crawford was scheduled to play the lead in the remake of ''Footloose'' but dropped out. Zac Efron was also tied to the project at one point before dropping out as well. Kenny Wormald was eventually cast for the role.

In June 2010, it was confirmed that Crawford will join the indie flick ''Peace, Love, & Misunderstanding'' alongside Jane Fonda and Catherine Keener. He will portray a war-protesting butcher, Cole, who is a love interest of Fonda's character's daughter.

In May 2011, it was announced that Crawford had been cast in the romantic comedy film ''Responsible Adults'' opposite actress Katie Holmes, written by Alex Schemmer and directed by Jon Poll. He will portray the role of 22-year-old Baxter Wood. Shooting is expected to start in the fall in Los Angeles.

In June 2011, Crawford signed to play a lead role of South African man accused of murder in a new independent film based on an acclaimed 1998 novel by Nobel Prize winning South African author Nadine Gordimer called ''The House Gun''. ''The House Gun'' tells the story of a wealthy, liberal South African, played by Pierce Brosnan, who hires a black lawyer to defend his son Duncan (Crawford) when he is accused of killing his friend in the early years of post-apartheid South Africa.

On July 12, 2011, Lionsgate and the producers of the film adaptation of the worldwide bestselling book ''What to Expect When You're Expecting'' by Heidi Murkoff announced that Crawford had been cast to star along with Cameron Diaz and Jennifer Lopez in What to Expect When You're Expecting (film). The film, directed by Kirk Jones who previously directed Waking Ned Devine and Nanny McPhee, was acquired from a script by Heather Hach and re-written by Shauna Cross. Crawford will play Marco in one of the film’s interlocking stories. His character reunites with an old flame after a turf war between their respective food trucks, and they embark on a journey together in the wake of a surprise pregnancy. The shooting begins in July 2011 with a release planned for May 11, 2012.

Personal life

Crawford and singer Carrie Underwood started dating in October 2007. They decided to break up in April 2008 via text message.

On June 4, 2010, Crawford was arrested and charged in Texas with misdemeanor possession of marijuana. Police said Crawford was in a parked car when he was arrested for having less than two ounces of marijuana. Crawford insisted he was innocent and was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. In 2011, it was reported that the charges would be dismissed and his record expunged if he met certain conditions, including performing 24 hours of community service and reporting to a probation officer once a month for 12 months.

Filmography

Film
! Year !! Film !! Role !! Notes
	''Long Lost Son''	Matthew Williams / Mark Halloran	TV movie
	Tyler Simms
		Hayden Price
''The Haunting of Molly Hartley''	Joseph Young
2010		White Mike
2011	''Peace, Love, and Misunderstanding''	Cole
2012		Marco	Filming
Television
! Year !! Title !! Role !! Notes
2007–present			Main castTeen Choice Award for Choice TV: Male Breakout Star (2008) Teen Choice Award for Choice TV Actor: Drama (2009, 2010, 2011) Nominated – Teen Choice Award for Choice TV Actor: Drama (2008) Nominated – Teen Choice Award for Choice Male Hottie (2008, 2009)
2008–2010	''Family Guy''	Various	3 episodes; Voice
2009	''Robot Chicken''	John Connor	1 episode; Voice
Music videos
! Year !! Song !! Role !! Artist
2009	"I Will Be"	Boyfriend	Leona Lewis

Awards and nominations

! Year	! Award	! Category	! Nominated work	! Result
	rowspan="6"	Choice TV Actor: Drama	rowspan="2"
Choice TV: Male Breakout Star
	Choice Male Hottie
TV Choice Actor: Drama	rowspan="3"
2010	TV Choice Actor: Drama
2011	Choice TV Actor: Drama
2011	People's Choice Award	Favorite TV Drama Actor	''Gossip Girl''

References

External links

Chace Crawford cast bio at The CW

Category:1985 births Category:Actors from Texas Category:American film actors Category:American male models Category:American television actors Category:Living people Category:People from Lubbock, Texas

af:Chace Crawford ar:تشيس �?را�?�?�?رد bg:Чей�? Кро�?фърд da:Chace Crawford de:Chace Crawford es:Chace Crawford fr:Chace Crawford hr:Chace Crawford id:Chace Crawford is:Chace Crawford it:Chace Crawford he:צ'ייס קרופורד hu:Chace Crawford nl:Chace Crawford ja:�??ェイス�?�ク�?��?�ォ�?��?� no:Chace Crawford pl:Chace Crawford pt:Chace Crawford ru:Кро�?форд, Чей�? sl:Chace Crawford fi:Chace Crawford sv:Chace Crawford th:�?ชส ครอว์ฟอร์ด tr:Chace Crawford vi:Chace Crawford zh:查斯·歌羅馥

Coordinates	45°30′″N73°40′″N
name	Christopher Hitchens
birth name	Christopher Eric Hitchens
birth date	April 13, 1949
birth place	Portsmouth, England
death date	December 15, 2011
death place	Houston, Texas, U.S.
occupation	Writer, journalist, public speaker
alma mater	Balliol College, Oxford
nationality	English American
citizenship	British and American
religion	None
subject	Politics, religion, history, biography, literature
spouse
relatives	Peter Hitchens (brother)
influences	George Orwell, Leszek Kolakowski, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, George Eliot, Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg, John Stuart Mill, Joseph Heller, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal, Edward Said, Salman Rushdie, Vladimir Nabokov, Richard Llewellyn, Aldous Huxley, PG Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh, Richard Hofstadter, Paul Mark Scott, James Fenton, James Joyce, Albert Camus, Oscar Wilde, Conor Cruise O'Brien, Martin Amis, Kingsley Amis, Ian McEwan, Colm Tóibín, Bertrand Russell, Wilfred Owen, Israel Shahak, Isaiah Berlin, Émile Zola, W. H. Auden, Susan Sontag
influenced	Johann Hari, Martin Amis, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins
signature	CH Signature 2.jpg|200px
website	}}

Christopher Eric Hitchens, nicknamed "Hitch", (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was an English American author, essayist and journalist, whose books, essays, and journalistic career spanned more than four decades. He was a columnist and literary critic for ''The Atlantic'', ''Free Inquiry'', ''The Nation'', ''Salon'', ''Slate'', ''Vanity Fair'', ''World Affairs'', and became a media fellow at the Hoover Institution in September 2008. He was a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits and in 2005 was voted the world's fifth top public intellectual in a ''Prospect''/''Foreign Policy'' poll.

Hitchens was known for his admiration of George Orwell, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson and for his excoriating critiques of Mother Teresa, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Henry Kissinger and Britain's royal family, among others. His confrontational style of debate made him both a lauded and controversial figure. As a political observer, polemicist and self-defined radical, he rose to prominence as a fixture of the left-wing publications in his native Britain and in the United States. His departure from the established political left began in 1989 after what he called the "tepid reaction" of the Western left following Ayatollah Khomeini's issue of a ''fatw�?'' calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie. The September 11 attacks strengthened his internationalist embrace of an interventionist foreign policy, and his vociferous criticism of what he called "fascism with an Islamic face". His numerous editorials in support of the Iraq War caused some to label him a neoconservative, although Hitchens insisted he was not "a conservative of any kind".

Identified as a champion of the "New Atheism" movement, Hitchens described himself as an antitheist and a believer in the philosophical values of the Enlightenment. Hitchens said that a person "could be an atheist and wish that belief in god were correct", but that "an antitheist, a term I'm trying to get into circulation, is someone who is relieved that there's no evidence for such an assertion." According to Hitchens, the concept of a god or a supreme being is a totalitarian belief that destroys individual freedom, and that free expression and scientific discovery should replace religion as a means of teaching ethics and defining human civilization. He wrote at length on atheism and the nature of religion in his 2007 book ''God Is Not Great''.

Though Hitchens retained his British citizenship, he became a United States citizen on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial on 13 April 2007, his 58th birthday. Asteroid 57901 Hitchens is named after him. His memoir, ''Hitch-22'', was published in June 2010. Touring for the book was cut short later in the same month so he could begin treatment for newly diagnosed esophageal cancer. On 15 December 2011, Hitchens died from pneumonia, a complication of his cancer, in the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas.

Life and career

Early life and education

His mother, Yvonne Jean (née Hickman), and father, Eric Ernest Hitchens (1909–1987), met in Scotland while both were serving in the Royal Navy during World War II. Yvonne was at the time a "Wren" (a member of the Women's Royal Naval Service), and Eric a "purse-lipped and silent" commander, whose ship HMS ''Jamaica'' helped sink Nazi Germany's battleship ''Scharnhorst'' in the Battle of the North Cape. His father's naval career required the family to move a number of times from base to base throughout Britain and its dependencies, including in Malta, where Christopher's brother Peter was born in Sliema in 1951.

Hitchens's mother having argued that "if there is going to be an upper class in this country, then Christopher is going to be in it,", in the late fifties and early sixties he was educated at Mount House School in Tavistock in Devon, then at the independent Leys School in Cambridge, and then at Balliol College in Oxford, where he was tutored by Steven Lukes and read philosophy, politics, and economics. Hitchens was "bowled over" in his adolescence 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. In 1968, he took part in the TV quiz show ''University Challenge''.

Hitchens has written of his homosexual experiences when in boarding school in his memoir, ''Hitch-22''. These experiences continued in his college years, when he allegedly had relationships with two men who eventually became a part of the Thatcher government.

In the 1960s Hitchens joined the political left, drawn by his anger over the Vietnam War, nuclear weapons, racism, and "oligarchy", including that of "the unaccountable corporation". He would express affinity with the politically charged countercultural and protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s. However, he deplored the rife recreational drug use of the time, which he describes as hedonistic.

He joined the Labour Party in 1965, but along with the majority of the Labour students' organization was expelled in 1967, because of what Hitchens called "Prime Minister Harold Wilson's contemptible support for the war in Vietnam". Under the influence of Peter Sedgwick, who translated the writings of Russian revolutionary and Soviet dissident Victor Serge, Hitchens forged an ideological interest in Trotskyist and anti-Stalinist socialism. Shortly after he joined "a small but growing post-Trotskyist Luxemburgist sect".

Journalistic career (1970–1981)

Hitchens began working as a correspondent for the magazine ''International Socialism'', published by the International Socialists, the forerunners of today's British Socialist Workers Party. This group was broadly Trotskyist, but differed from more orthodox Trotskyist groups in its refusal to defend communist states as "workers' states". Their slogan was "Neither Washington nor Moscow but International Socialism".

Hitchens left Oxford with a third class degree. His first job was with the London ''Times Higher Education Supplement'', where he served as social science editor. Hitchens admitted that he hated the position, and was later fired; he recalled, "I sometimes think if I'd been any good at that job, I might still be doing it." In the 1970s, he went on to work for the ''New Statesman'', where he became friends with the authors Martin Amis and Ian McEwan, among others. At the ''New Statesman'' he acquired a reputation as a fierce left-winger, aggressively attacking targets such as Henry Kissinger, the Vietnam War, and the Roman Catholic Church.

In November 1973, Hitchens' mother committed suicide in Athens in a suicide pact with her lover, a former clergyman named Timothy Bryan. They overdosed on sleeping pills in adjoining hotel rooms, and Bryan slashed his wrists in the bathtub. Hitchens flew alone to Athens to recover his mother's body. Hitchens said he thought his mother was pressured into suicide by fear that her husband would learn of her infidelity, as their marriage had been strained and unhappy. Both her children were then independent adults. While in Greece, Hitchens reported on the constitutional crisis of the military junta. It became his first leading article for the ''New Statesman''.

American career (1981–2011)

After moving to the United States in 1981, Hitchens wrote for ''The Nation'', where he penned vociferous critiques of Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and American foreign policy in South and Central America. He became a contributing editor of ''Vanity Fair'' in 1992, writing ten columns a year. He left ''The Nation'' in 2002 after profoundly disagreeing with other contributors over the Iraq War. There is speculation that Hitchens was the inspiration for Tom Wolfe's character Peter Fallow in the 1987 novel ''The Bonfire of the Vanities'', but others — including Hitchens (or he indicated as such while alive) — believe it to be ''Spy Magazine''s "Ironman Nightlife Decathlete" Anthony Haden-Guest. In 1987, his father died from cancer of the esophagus.

Hitchens spent part of his early career in journalism as a foreign correspondent in Cyprus. Through his work there he met his first wife Eleni Meleagrou, a Greek Cypriot, with whom he had two children, Alexander and Sophia. His son, Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, born in 1984, has worked as a researcher for London think tanks the Policy Exchange and the Centre for Social Cohesion. Hitchens continued writing essay-style correspondence pieces from a variety of locales, including Chad, Uganda and the Darfur region of Sudan. His work took him to over 60 countries. In 1991 he received a Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction.

Before Hitchens' political shift, the American author and polemicist Gore Vidal was apt to speak of Hitchens as his "Dauphin" or "heir". In 2010, Hitchens attacked Vidal in a ''Vanity Fair'' piece headlined "Vidal Loco," calling him a "crackpot" for his adoption of 9/11 conspiracy theories. Also, on the back of his book ''Hitch-22,'' among the praise from notable writers and figures, a Vidal quote endorsing Hitchens as his successor is crossed out with a red 'X' and a message saying "NO C.H." His strong advocacy of the war in Iraq had gained Hitchens a wider readership, and in September 2005 he was named one of the "Top 100 Public Intellectuals" by ''Foreign Policy'' and ''Prospect'' magazines. An online poll ranked the 100 intellectuals, but the magazines noted that the rankings of Hitchens (5), Noam Chomsky (1), and Abdolkarim Soroush (15) were partly due to supporters publicising the vote.

In 2007 Hitchens' work for ''Vanity Fair'' won him the National Magazine Award in the category "Columns and Commentary". He was a finalist once more in the same category in 2008 for some of his columns in ''Slate'' but lost out to Matt Taibbi of ''Rolling Stone''. He won the National Magazine Award for Columns about Cancer in 2011. Hitchens also served on the Advisory Board of Secular Coalition for America and offered advice to Coalition on the acceptance and inclusion of nontheism in American life.

Literature reviews

Hitchens wrote a monthly essay on books in ''The Atlantic'' and contributed occasionally to other literary journals. One of his books, ''Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere'', is a collection of such works, and ''Love, Poverty and War'' contains a section devoted to literary essays. In ''Why Orwell Matters'', he defends Orwell's writings against modern critics as relevant today and progressive for his time. In the 2008 book ''Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left'', many literary critiques are included of essays and other books of writers, such as David Horowitz and Edward Said.

During a three-hour interview by ''Book TV'', he named authors who have had influence on his views, including Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Evelyn Waugh, P. G. Wodehouse and Conor Cruise O'Brien.

Political views

The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' referred to Hitchens as a "gadfly with gusto". In 2009, Hitchens was listed by ''Forbes'' magazine as one of the "25 most influential liberals in the U.S. media". However, the same article noted that he would "likely be aghast to find himself on this list", since it reduces his self-styled radicalism to mere liberalism. Hitchens' political perspective can be found in his wide ranging writings which include many of the political dialogues he published.

Socialism

Hitchens became a socialist "largely [as] the outcome of a study of history, taking sides ... in the battles over industrialism and war and empire." In 2001, he told Rhys Southan of ''Reason'' magazine that he could no longer say "I am a socialist." Socialists, he claimed, had ceased to offer a positive alternative to the capitalist system. Capitalism had become the more revolutionary economic system, and he welcomed globalisation as "innovative and internationalist", but added, "I don't think that the contradictions, as we used to say, of the system, are by any means all resolved." He stated that he had a renewed interest in the freedom of the individual from the state, but that he still considered libertarianism "ahistorical" both on the world stage and in the work of creating a stable and functional society, adding that libertarians are "more worried about the over-mighty state than the unaccountable corporation" whereas "the present state of affairs ... combines the worst of bureaucracy with the worst of the insurance companies."

In 2006, in a town hall meeting in Pennsylvania debating the Jewish Tradition with Martin Amis, Hitchens commented on his political philosophy by stating, "I am no longer a socialist, but I still am a Marxist". In a June 2010 interview with ''The New York Times'', he stated that "I still think like a Marxist in many ways. I think the materialist conception of history is valid. I consider myself a very conservative Marxist". In 2009, in an article for ''The Atlantic'' entitled "The Revenge of Karl Marx", Hitchens frames the late-2000s recession in terms of Marx's economic analysis and notes how much Marx admired the capitalist system he was calling for the end of, but says that Marx ultimately failed to grasp how revolutionary capitalist innovation was. Hitchens was an admirer of Che Guevara, commenting that "[Che's] death meant a lot to me and countless like me at the time, he was a role model, albeit an impossible one for us bourgeois romantics insofar as he went and did what revolutionaries were meant to do — fought and died for his beliefs." However, in an essay written in 1997, he distanced himself somewhat from some of Che's actions.

He continued to regard both Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky as great men, and the October Revolution as a necessary event in the modernization of Russia. In 2005, Hitchens praised Lenin's creation of "secular Russia" and his discrediting of the Russian Orthodox Church, describing it as "an absolute warren of backwardness and evil and superstition".

Iraq War and the war on terror

The years after the ''fatwa'' issued against Salman Rushdie saw Hitchens looking for allies and friends. In the United States he became increasingly critical of what he called "excuse making" on the left. At the same time, he was attracted to the foreign policy ideas of some on the Republican-right that promoted pro-liberalism intervention, especially the neoconservative group that included Paul Wolfowitz. Around this time, he befriended the Iraqi dissident and businessman Ahmed Chalabi. In 2004, Hitchens stated that neoconservative support for US intervention in Iraq convinced him that he was "on the same side as the neo-conservatives" when it came to contemporary foreign policy issues. Hitchens had also been known to refer to his association with "temporary neocon allies".

Following the September 11 attacks, Hitchens and Noam Chomsky debated the nature of radical Islam and the proper response to it. In October 2001, Hitchens wrote criticisms of Chomsky in ''The Nation''. Chomsky responded and Hitchens issued a rebuttal to Chomsky to which Chomsky again responded. Approximately a year after the September 11 attacks and his exchanges with Chomsky, Hitchens left ''The Nation'', claiming that its editors, readers and contributors considered John Ashcroft a bigger threat than Osama bin Laden, and that they were making excuses on behalf of Islamist terrorism; in the following months he wrote articles increasingly at odds with his colleagues.

Christopher Hitchens argued the case for the Iraq War in a 2003 collection of essays entitled ''A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq'', and he has held numerous public debates on the topic with George Galloway and Scott Ritter. Though he admitted to the numerous failures of the war, and its high civilian casualties, he stood by the position that deposing Saddam Hussein was a long-overdue responsibility of the United States, after decades of poor policy, and that holding free elections in Iraq had been a success not to be scoffed at. He argued that a continued fight in Iraq against insurgents, whether they be former Saddam loyalists or Islamic extremists, was a fight worth having, and that those insurgents, not American forces, should have been the ones taking the brunt of the blame for a slow reconstruction and high civilian casualties.

Criticism of George W. Bush

Prior to September 11, 2001, and the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, Hitchens was highly critical of Bush's "non-interventionist" foreign policy. He also criticized Bush's support of intelligent design and capital punishment.

Although Hitchens defended Bush's post-September 11 foreign policy, he criticized the actions of U.S. troops in Abu Ghraib and Haditha, and the U.S. government's use of waterboarding, which he unhesitatingly deemed as torture after being invited by ''Vanity Fair'' to voluntarily undergo it. In January 2006, Hitchens joined with four other individuals and four organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union and Greenpeace, as plaintiffs in a lawsuit, ''ACLU v. NSA'', challenging Bush's warrantless domestic spying program; the lawsuit was filed by the ACLU.

Presidential endorsements

Hitchens would elaborate on his political views and ideological shift in a discussion with Eric Alterman on Bloggingheads.tv. In this discussion Hitchens revealed himself to be a supporter of Ralph Nader in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, who was disenchanted with the candidacy of both George W. Bush and Al Gore.

Hitchens made a brief return to ''The Nation'' just before the 2004 U.S. presidential election and wrote that he was "slightly" for Bush; shortly afterwards, ''Slate'' polled its staff on their positions on the candidates and mistakenly printed Hitchens' vote as pro-John Kerry. Hitchens shifted his opinion to "neutral", saying: "It's absurd for liberals to talk as if Kristallnacht is impending with Bush, and it's unwise and indecent for Republicans to equate Kerry with capitulation. There's no one to whom he can surrender, is there? I think that the nature of the jihadist enemy will decide things in the end".

In the 2008 presidential election, Hitchens in an article for ''Slate'' stated, "I used to call myself a single-issue voter on the essential question of defending civilization against its terrorist enemies and their totalitarian protectors, and on that 'issue' I hope I can continue to expose and oppose any ambiguity." He was critical of both main party candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain. Hitchens went on to support Obama, calling McCain "senile", and his choice of running mate Sarah Palin "absurd", calling Palin a "pathological liar" and a "national disgrace".

Blumenthal–Hitchens feud

Hitchens and Carol Blue chose to submit an affidavit to the trial managers of the Republican Party in the trial of impeachment of Bill Clinton. In the affidavit, Blue and Hitchens swore that their then-friend, Sidney Blumenthal, had described Monica Lewinsky as a stalker. This allegation contradicted Blumenthal's own sworn deposition in the trial, and it resulted in a hostile exchange of opinion in the public sphere between Hitchens and Blumenthal. Following the publication of Blumenthal's ''The Clinton Wars,'' Hitchens wrote several pieces in which he accused Blumenthal of manipulating the facts.

Israel–Palestine

Hitchens had said of himself, "I am an Anti-Zionist. I'm one of those people of Jewish descent who believes that Zionism would be a mistake even if there were no Palestinians."

A review of his autobiography ''Hitch-22'' in the ''Jewish Daily Forward'' refers to Hitchens as "a prominent anti-Zionist" and says that he views Zionism "as an injustice against the Palestinians". Others have commented on his anti-Zionism as well suggesting that his memoir was "marred by the occasional eruption of [his] anti-Zionism". The ''Jewish Daily Forward'' quoted him saying of Israel's prospects for the future, "I have never been able to banish the queasy inner suspicion that Israel just did not look, or feel, either permanent or sustainable."

In ''Slate'', Hitchens pondered the notion that, instead of curing antisemitism through the creation of a Jewish state, "Zionism has only replaced and repositioned" it, saying: "there are three groups of 6 million Jews. The first 6 million live in what the Zionist movement used to call Palestine. The second 6 million live in the United States. The third 6 million are distributed mainly among Russia, France, Britain, and Argentina. Only the first group lives daily in range of missiles that can be (and are) launched by people who hate Jews." Hitchens argued that instead of supporting Zionism, Jews should help "secularize and reform their own societies", believing that unless one is religious, "what the hell are you doing in the greater Jerusalem area in the first place?"

During a town hall function in Pennsylvania with Martin Amis, Hitchens stated that "one must not insult or degrade or humiliate people" and that he "would be opposed to this maltreatment of the Palestinians if it took place on a remote island with no geopolitical implications". Hitchens described Zionism as "an ethno-nationalist quasi-religious ideology" and stated his desire that if possible, he would "re-wind the tape [to] stop Hertzl from telling the initial demagogic lie (actually two lies) that a land without a people needs a people without a land".

He continued to say that Zionism "nonetheless has founded a sort of democratic state which isn't any worse in its practice than many others with equally dubious origins." He stated that settlement in order to achieve security for Israel is "doomed to fail in the worst possible way", and the cessation of this "appallingly racist and messianic delusion" would "confront the internal clerical and chauvinist forces which want to instate a theocracy for Jews". However, Hitchens contended that the "solution of withdrawal would not satisfy the jihadists" and wondered "What did they imagine would be the response of the followers of the Prophet [Muhammad]?" Hitchens bemoaned the transference into religious terrorism of Arab secularism as a means of democratization: "the most depressing and wretched spectacle of the past decade, for all those who care about democracy and secularism, has been the degeneration of Palestinian Arab nationalism into the theocratic and thanatocratic hell of Hamas and Islamic Jihad". He maintained that the Israel-Palestine conflict is a "trivial squabble" that has become "so dangerous to all of us" because of "the faith-based element."

Hitchens collaborated on this issue with prominent Palestinian advocate Edward Said, in 1988 publishing ''Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question''.

Domestic policy

Hitchens actively supported drug policy reform and called for the abolition of the "War on Drugs" which he described as an "authoritarian war" during a debate with William F. Buckley. He supported the legalization of cannabis for both medical and recreational purposes, citing it as a cure for glaucoma and as treatment for numerous side-effects induced by chemotherapy, including severe nausea, describing the prohibition of the drug as "sadistic". On the issue of abortion, Hitchens prioritized in affirming that he believed a fetus should be regarded as an "unborn child", but opposed the overturning of ''Roe v. Wade'' and supported the development of medical abortion techniques, and fundamentally believed in access to contraceptives and reproductive rights as "the only thing that is known to cure poverty", and in order to prevent surgical abortion altogether.

Other

Other issues Hitchens wrote on the subjects of included his support for the reunification of Ireland, abolition of the British monarchy, and his condemnation of the war crimes of Slobodan Milošević and Franjo Tuđman in Yugoslavia, and the Bosnian War.

Critiques of specific individuals

Hitchens was known for his scathing critiques of public figures. Three figures — Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, and Mother Teresa — were the targets of three separate full length texts, ''No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton'', ''The Trial of Henry Kissinger'', and ''The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice''. Hitchens also wrote book-length biographical essays about Thomas Jefferson (''Thomas Jefferson: Author of America''), George Orwell (''Why Orwell Matters''), and Thomas Paine (''Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man": A Biography'').

However, the majority of Hitchens's critiques took the form of short opinion pieces, some of the more notable being his critiques of: Jerry Falwell, George Galloway, Mel Gibson, Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, Michael Moore, Daniel Pipes, Ronald Reagan, Jesse Helms, and Cindy Sheehan.

Views on religion

Hitchens often spoke out against the Abrahamic religions, or what he called "the three great monotheisms" (Judaism, Christianity and Islam). He said: "The real axis of evil is Christianity, Judaism, and Islam". In his book, ''God Is Not Great'', Hitchens expanded his criticism to include all religions, including those rarely criticized by Western secularists such as Hinduism and neo-paganism. His book had mixed reactions, from praise in ''The New York Times'' for his "logical flourishes and conundrums" to accusations of "intellectual and moral shabbiness" in the ''Financial Times''. ''God Is Not Great'' was nominated for a National Book Award on 10 October 2007.

Hitchens contended that organized religion is "the main source of hatred in the world", "[v]iolent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism, and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children", and that accordingly it "ought to have a great deal on its conscience". In ''God Is Not Great'', Hitchens contends that:

[A]bove all, we are in need of a renewed Enlightenment, which will base itself on the proposition that the proper study of mankind is man and woman [referencing Alexander Pope]. This Enlightenment will not need to depend, like its predecessors, on the heroic breakthroughs of a few gifted and exceptionally courageous people. It is within the compass of the average person. The study of literature and poetry, both for its own sake and for the eternal ethical questions with which it deals, can now easily depose the scrutiny of sacred texts that have been found to be corrupt and confected. The pursuit of unfettered scientific inquiry, and the availability of new findings to masses of people by electronic means, will revolutionize our concepts of research and development. Very importantly, the divorce between the sexual life and fear, and the sexual life and disease, and the sexual life and tyranny, can now at last be attempted, on the sole condition that we banish all religions from the discourse. And all this and more is, for the first time in our history, within the reach if not the grasp of everyone.

His book rendered him one of the major advocates of the "New Atheism" movement, and he also was made an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society. Hitchens said he would accept an invitation from any religious leader who wished to debate with him. He also served on the advisory board of the Secular Coalition for America, a lobbying group for atheists and humanists in Washington, DC. In 2007, Hitchens began a series of written debates on the question "Is Christianity Good for the World?" with Christian theologian and pastor, Douglas Wilson, published in ''Christianity Today'' magazine. This exchange eventually became a book by the same title in 2008. During their book tour to promote the book, film producer Darren Doane sent a film crew to accompany them. Doane produced the film ''Collision'': "Is Christianity GOOD for the World?" which was released on 27 October 2009.

On 26 November 2010 Hitchens appeared in Toronto, Canada at the Munk Debates, where he debated religion with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a convert to Roman Catholicism. Blair argued religion is a force for good, while Hitchens was against it. Preliminary results on the Munk website said 56 per cent of the votes backed the proposition (Hitchens' position) before hearing the debate, with 22 per cent against (Blair's position), and 21 per cent undecided, with the undecided voters leaning toward Hitchens, giving him a 68 per cent to 32 per cent victory over Blair, after the debate.

In February 2006, Hitchens helped organize a pro-Denmark rally outside the Danish Embassy in Washington, DC in response to the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy.

Hitchens was accused by William A. Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Liberties of being particularly anti-Catholic. Hitchens responded "when religion is attacked in this country [...] the Catholic Church comes in for a little more than its fair share". Hitchens had also been accused of anti-Catholic bigotry by others, including Brent Bozell, Tom Piatak in ''The American Conservative'', and UCLA Law Professor Stephen Bainbridge. In an interview with ''Radar'' in 2007, Hitchens said that if the Christian right's agenda were implemented in the United States "It wouldn't last very long and would, I hope, lead to civil war, which they will lose, but for which it would be a great pleasure to take part." When Joe Scarborough on 12 March 2004 asked Hitchens whether he was "consumed with hatred for conservative Catholics", Hitchens responded that he was not and that he just thinks that "all religious belief is sinister and infantile". Piatak claimed that "A straightforward description of all Hitchens's anti-Catholic outbursts would fill every page in this magazine", noting particularly Hitchens' assertion that U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts should not be confirmed because of his faith.

Hitchens was raised nominally Christian, and went to Christian boarding schools but from an early age declined to participate in communal prayers. Later in life, Hitchens discovered that he was of partially Jewish ancestry. According to Hitchens, when his brother Peter took his fiancée to meet their maternal grandmother, who was then in her 90s, she said of his fiancée, "She's Jewish, isn't she?" and then announced: "Well, I've got something to tell you. So are you." Hitchens found out that his maternal grandmother, Dorothy Levin, was raised Jewish (Dorothy's father and maternal grandfather had both been born Jewish, and Dorothy's maternal grandmother – Hitchens' matrilineal great-great-grandmother – was a convert to Judaism). Hitchens' maternal grandfather converted to Judaism before marrying Dorothy Levin. Hitchens' Jewish-born ancestors were immigrants from Eastern Europe (including Poland). In an article in the ''The Guardian'' on 14 April 2002, Hitchens stated that he could be considered Jewish because Jewish descent is matrilineal. In a 2010 interview at New York Public Library, Hitchens stated that he was against circumcision, a Jewish tradition, and that he believed "if anyone wants to saw off bits of their genitalia they should do when they're grown up and have made the decision for themselves".

In February 2010, he was named to the Freedom From Religion Foundation's Honorary Board of distinguished achievers.

Personal life

Marriages and children

Hitchens married Eleni Meleagrou, a Greek Cypriot, in a Greek Orthodox church in 1981; the couple had a son, Alexander and a daughter, Sophia. In 1989 Hitchens left Meleagrou for Carol Blue, an American writer. The couple married in a New York synagogue; they had a daughter, Antonia.

Relationship with his younger brother

Hitchens' younger brother by two-and-a-half years, Peter Hitchens, is a Christian and socially conservative journalist in London, although, like his brother, he had been a Trotskyist in the 1970s. The brothers had a protracted falling-out after Peter wrote that Christopher had once joked that he "didn't care if the Red Army watered its horses at Hendon" (a suburb of London). Christopher denied having said this and broke off contact with his brother. He then referred to his brother as "an idiot" in a letter to ''Commentary'', and the dispute spilled into other publications as well. Christopher eventually expressed a willingness to reconcile and to meet his new nephew (born in 1999); shortly thereafter the brothers gave several interviews together in which they said that their personal disagreements had been resolved. They appeared together on 21 June 2007 edition of the BBC current affairs discussion show ''Question Time''. The pair engaged in a formal televised debate for the first time on 3 April 2008, at Grand Valley State University, and at the Pew Forum on 12 October 2010.

Smoking and drinking

A June 2006 profile on Hitchens by NPR stated: "Hitchens is known for his love of cigarettes and alcohol — and his prodigious literary output." However, in late 2007 he gave up smoking, undergoing an epiphany in Madison, Wisconsin. His brother Peter later wrote of his surprise at this decision. It was while writing his memoir ''Hitch-22'' that he resumed smoking cigarettes and continued until his cancer diagnosis. Hitchens admitted to drinking heavily; in 2003 he wrote that his daily intake of alcohol was enough "to kill or stun the average mule", noting that many great writers "did some of their finest work when blotto, smashed, polluted, shitfaced, squiffy, whiffled, and three sheets to the wind."

British politician George Galloway, founder of the socialist Respect Party, on his way to testify in front of a United States Senate sub-committee investigating the scandals in the U.N. Oil-for-Food programme, called Hitchens a "drink-sodden ex-Trotskyist popinjay", to which Hitchens quickly replied, "only some of which is true". Later, in a column for ''Slate'' promoting his debate with Galloway which was to take place on 14 September 2005, he elaborated on his prior response: "He says that I am an ex-Trotskyist (true), a 'popinjay' (true enough, since the word's original Webster's definition is a target for arrows and shots), and that I cannot hold a drink (here I must protest)."

Oliver Burkeman writes, "Since the parting of ways on Iraq [...] Hitchens claims to have detected a new, personalised nastiness in the attacks on him, especially over his fabled consumption of alcohol. He welcomes being attacked as a drinker 'because I always think it's a sign of victory when they move on to the ad hominem.' He drinks, he says, 'because it makes other people less boring. I have a great terror of being bored. But I can work with or without it. It takes quite a lot to get me to slur.'"

In the question and answer session following a speech Hitchens gave to the Commonwealth Club of California on 9 July 2009, one audience member asked what was Hitchens' favorite whisky. Hitchens replied that "the best blended scotch in the history of the world" is Johnnie Walker Black Label. He also playfully indicated that it was the favorite whisky of, among others, the Iraqi Ba'ath Party, the Palestinian Authority, the Libyan dictatorship, and "large branches of the Saudi Arabian Royal Family". He concluded his answer by calling it the "breakfast of champions" and exhorted the audience to "accept no substitute".

In his 2010 memoir ''Hitch-22'', Hitchens wrote: "There was a time when I could reckon to outperform all but the most hardened imbibers, but I now drink relatively carefully." He described his current drinking routine on working-days as follows: "At about half past midday, a decent slug of Mr. Walker's amber restorative, cut with Perrier water (an ideal delivery system) and no ice. At luncheon, perhaps half a bottle of red wine: not always more but never less. Then back to the desk, and ready to repeat the treatment at the evening meal. No 'after dinner drinks' — ​most especially nothing sweet and never, ever any brandy. 'Nightcaps' depend on how well the day went, but always the mixture as before. No mixing: no messing around with a gin here and a vodka there."

Reflecting on the lifestyle that supported his career as a writer he said:

I always knew there was a risk in the bohemian lifestyle ... I decided to take it because it helped my concentration, it stopped me being bored — it stopped other people being boring. It would make me want to prolong the conversation and enhance the moment. If you ask: would I do it again? I would probably say yes. But I would have quit earlier hoping to get away with the whole thing. I decided all of life is a wager and I'm going to wager on this bit ... In a strange way I don't regret it. It's just impossible for me to picture life without wine, and other things, fueling the company, keeping me reading, energising me. It worked for me. It really did.

Esophageal cancer and death

In June 2010, Hitchens postponed his book tour for ''Hitch-22'' to undergo treatment for esophageal cancer. He announced that he was undergoing treatment in a ''Vanity Fair'' piece entitled "Topic of Cancer". Hitchens said that he recognised the long-term prognosis was far from positive, and that he would be a "very lucky person to live another five years". In November 2010, Hitchens canceled a scheduled appearance in New York, where he was to debate religion writers David Hazony and Stephen Prothero on the subject of the Ten Commandments. Earlier that year, he published a piece in ''Vanity Fair'' on the subject, and was working on a book about the Ten Commandments as well.

During his illness, Hitchens was under the care of Francis Collins and was the subject of Collins' new cancer treatment which maps out the human genome and selectively targets damaged DNA.

In April 2011, Hitchens was forced to cancel an appearance at the American Atheist Convention, and instead sent a letter that stated, "Nothing would have kept me from joining you except the loss of my voice (at least my speaking voice) which in turn is due to a long argument I am currently having with the specter of death." He closed with "And don't keep the faith." The letter also dismissed the notion of a possible deathbed conversion, in which he claimed that "redemption and supernatural deliverance appears even more hollow and artificial to me than it did before." In June 2011, he spoke to a University of Waterloo audience via a home video link.

In October 2011, Hitchens made a public appearance at the Texas Freethought Convention in Houston, TX. ''Atheist Alliance of America'' was also a participant in the joint convention.

In November 2011, George Eaton wrote in the ''New Statesman'':

The tragedy of Hitchens' illness is that it came at a time when he enjoyed a larger audience than ever. Of his tight circle of friends – Amis, Fenton, McEwan, Rushdie – Hitchens was the last to gain international renown, yet he is now read more widely than any of them." Eaton revealed that Hitchens would like to be remembered as a man who fought totalitarianism in all its forms although many remember him as a "lefty who turned right", and his support of the Iraq War and not his support of the War in Bosnia on the side of the Moslems. Eaton concluded, "The great polemicist is certain to be remembered, but, as he is increasingly aware, perhaps not as he would like."

Hitchens died on December 15th, 2011 at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

In accordance with his wishes, his body was donated to medical research.

Reactions to death

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said, "Christopher Hitchens was a complete one-off, an amazing mixture of writer, journalist, polemicist, and unique character. He was fearless in the pursuit of truth and any cause in which he believed. And there was no belief he held, that he did not advocate with passion, commitment and brilliance. He was an extraordinary, compelling and colorful human being whom it was a privilege to know."

Richard Dawkins, British evolutionary biologist at the University of Oxford and a friend of Hitchens', said, "I think he was one of the greatest orators of all time. He was a polymath, a wit, immensely knowledgeable, and a valiant fighter against all tyrants including imaginary supernatural ones."

Norman Finkelstein, American political scientist and author, wrote, "When I first learned that Hitchens was diagnosed with an excruciating and terminal cancer, it caused me to doubt my atheism. The news came just as Hitchens was about to go on a book tour for his long-awaited memoir. It was as if he was setting out on his victory lap when the adulating crowds were supposed to fawn over him and — wham! — his legs were lopped off at the kneecaps. The irony could not be more perfect: the god that the vindictive but witty Mr. Hitchens made a career scoffing at turns out to be ... vindictive but witty. When I heard that Hitchens was dead, I took a deep breath. The air felt cleaner, as if after a 40-day and 40-night downpour." Finkelstein also added, "I get no satisfaction from Hitchens's passing. Although he was the last to know it, every death is a tragedy, if only for the bereft child — or, as in the case of Cindy Sheehan, bereft parent — left behind.

Sam Harris, American writer and neuroscientist, wrote, "I have been privileged to witness the gratitude that so many people feel for Hitch’s life and work — for, wherever I speak, I meet his fans. On my last book tour, those who attended my lectures could not contain their delight at the mere mention of his name — and many of them came up to get their books signed primarily to request that I pass along their best wishes to him. It was wonderful to see how much Hitch was loved and admired — and to be able to share this with him before the end. I will miss you, brother."

Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health and former head of the Human Genome Project who helped treat Hitchens' illness, wrote, "I will miss Christopher. I will miss the brilliant turn of phrase, the good-natured banter, the wry sideways smile when he was about to make a remark that would make me laugh out loud. No doubt he now knows the answer to the question of whether there is more to the spirit than just atoms and molecules. I hope he was surprised by the answer. I hope to hear him tell about it someday. He will tell it really well."

British columnist and author Peter Hitchens, who had a tumultuous relationship with his older brother Christopher, wrote that he and Christopher "got on surprisingly well in the past few months, better than for about 50 years as it happens," and praised his brother as "courageous."

Irish-American political journalist Alexander Cockburn, founder of the left-wing political magazine ''CounterPunch'' wrote an obituary critical of Hitchens, criticizing his support for the Iraq War, criticisms of Mother Teresa, and criticisms of their mutual friend Edward Said and concluded, "I found the Hitchens cult of recent years entirely mystifying. He endured his final ordeal with pluck, sustained indomitably by his wife Carol."

Tributes followed from the philosopher Daniel Dennett, the physicist Lawrence Krauss, the actor Stephen Fry, the writer Ian McEwan, the philosopher A.C. Grayling; and ''Vanity Fair'', in which he was remembered as an "incomparable critic and masterful rhetorician".

Film and television appearances

As referenced from the Internet Movie Database, Hitchens Web or Charlie Rose. {|class="wikitable" style="text-align:center" |- ! Year ! Film and/or Television |- |1984 |align="left" | ''Opinions'': "Greece to their Rome" |- |1988 |align="left" | ''Frontiers (TV series)'' |- |1993 |align="left" | ''Everything You Need to Know'' |- |1994 |align="left" | ''Tracking Down Maggie: The Unofficial Biography of Margaret Thatcher'' |- |1994 |align="left" | ''Hell's Angel'' |- |1996 |align="left" | ''Where's Elvis This Week?'' |- |1996–2010 |align="left" | ''Charlie Rose (talk show)'' (13 episodes) |- |1998 |align="left" | ''Princess Diana: The Mourning After'' |- |1999–2002 |align="left" | ''Dennis Miller Live'' (TV show) (4 episodes) |- |2002 |align="left" | ''The Trials of Henry Kissinger'' |- |2003 |align="left" | ''Hidden in Plain Sight'' |- |2003–2009 |align="left" | ''Real Time with Bill Maher'' (TV show) (6 episodes) |- |2004 |align="left" | ''Mel Gibson: God's Lethal Weapon'' |- |2004–2006 |align="left" | ''Newsnight'' (TV show) (3 episodes) |- |2004–2010 |align="left" | ''The Daily Show'' (TV show) (4 episodes) |- |2005 |align="left" | ''Penn & Teller: Bullshit!'' (TV show)(1 episode, s03e05) |- |2005 |align="left" | ''The Al Franken Show'' (TV show)(1 episode) |- |2005 |align="left" | ''Confronting Iraq: Conflict and Hope'' |- |2005 |align="left" | ''Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism'' |- |2005–2008 |align="left" | ''Hardball with Chris Matthews'' (TV show)(3 episodes) |- |2006 |align="left" | ''American Zeitgeist'' |- |2006 |align="left" | ''Blog Wars'' |- |2007 |align="left" | ''Manufacturing Dissent'' |- |2007 |align="left" | ''Question Time (TV series)'' (1 episode) |- |2007 |align="left" | ''Your Mommy Kills Animals'' |- |2007 |align="left" | ''Personal Che'' |- |2007 |align="left" | ''Heckler'' |- |2007 |align="left" | ''In Pot We Trust'' |- |2008 |align="left" | ''Discussions with Richard Dawkins'': Episode 1: "The Four Horsemen" |- |2008 | style="text-align:left;"| ''Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed '' |- |2009 |align="left" | ''Holy Hell'' |- |2009 |align="left" | ''Presidency'' |- |2009 |align="left" | ''Collision: "Is Christianity GOOD for the World?"'' |- |2010 |align="left" | ''Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune'' |}

Selected publications

1984 ''Cyprus''. Quartet. Revised editions as ''Hostage to History: Cyprus from the Ottomans to Kissinger'', 1989 (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) and 1997 (Verso)

1988 ''Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question'' (contributor; co-editor with Edward Said) Verso, ISBN 0-86091-887-4 Reissued, 2001

1990 ''The Monarchy'', Chatto & Windus Ltd

1990 ''Blood, Class and Nostalgia: Anglo-American Ironies'', Farrar Straus & Giroux (T)(June 1990)

1995 ''The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice'', Verso

1997 ''The Parthenon Marbles: The Case for Reunification'', Verso

1999 ''No One Left to Lie To: The Values of the Worst Family'', Verso

2000 ''Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere'', Verso

2001 ''The Trial of Henry Kissinger''. Verso.

2001 ''Letters to a Young Contrarian'', Basic Books

2002 ''Why Orwell Matters'' also ''Orwell's Victory'', Basic Books, ISBN 0-465-03050-5

2004 ''Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays'', Thunder's Mouth, Nation Books, ISBN 1-56025-580-3

2005 ''Thomas Jefferson: Author of America'', Eminent Lives/Atlas Books/HarperCollins Publishers, ISBN 0-06-059896-4

2007 "Thomas Paine's Rights of Man: A Biography ", Atlantic Monthly Press, ISBN 0871139553

2007 ''The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Non-Believer'', [Editor] Perseus Publishing. ISBN 978-0-306-81608-6

2007 ''God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything'', Twelve/Hachette Book Group USA/Warner Books, ISBN 0-446-57980-7 / Published in the UK as ''God Is Not Great: The Case Against Religion'', Atlantic Books, ISBN 978-1-84354-586-6

2008 ''Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq and the Left'' (with Simon Cottee and Thomas Cushman), New York University Press

2008 ''Is Christianity Good for the World? — A Debate'' (co-author, with Douglas Wilson), Canon Press, ISBN 1-59128-053-2

2010 ''Hitch-22: A Memoir'', Twelve, ISBN 978-0-446-54033-9

2011 ''Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens'', Twelve. UK edition as ''Arguably: Selected Prose'', Atlantic, ISBN 1-4555-0277-4 / ISBN 978-1-4555-0277-6

References

External links

Daily Hitchens, an archive of material on or by Hitchens

in 2010

Drexel Interview (One-hour video interview) with Paula Marantz Cohen, June 2010

Christopher Hitchens collected news and commentary at ''The Boston Globe''

"Journalist Christopher Hitchens fully embraces the Bush war camp" from the World Socialist Website, October 2002

"Christopher Hitchens" feature story in ''Prospect'' magazine, May 2008

"Incendiary Author Spares No Targets" feature story in ''The New Zealand Herald'', May 2008

"Such, Such are His Joys" David Brooks assessment in ''The New York Times'', 1 July 2010

Hitchens on Dying with Cancer, video interview with ''The Atlantic'', August 2010

"Christopher Hitchens: 'You have to choose your future regrets'" ''The Guardian'', 13 November 2010

"Christopher Hitchens's Jewish Problem" feature article on ''Jewish Ideas Daily,'' 13 December 2010

A debate between Hitchens and Berlinski 2010

Outspoken and outrageous: Christopher Hitchens a 60 Minutes profile aired 6 March 2011

''Booknotes'' interview with Hitchens on ''For the Sake of Argument'', 17 October 1993.

;Articles by Hitchens

Contributor page at ''Vanity Fair''

Column archive at ''The Atlantic''

Article archive at ''The Guardian''

Hitchens articles at ''Slate''

Article archive at Journalisted

Category:1949 births Category:2011 deaths Category:Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford Category:Anti-Zionism Category:Anti–Vietnam War activists Category:Antitheists Category:Atheism activists Category:English people of Jewish descent Category:English people of Polish descent Category:British republicans Category:Cancer deaths in Texas Category:Deaths from esophageal cancer Category:English atheists Category:English biographers Category:English emigrants to the United States Category:English essayists Category:English expatriates in the United States Category:English humanists Category:English journalists Category:English Marxists Category:English political writers Category:Genital integrity activists Category:Materialists Category:Naturalized citizens of the United States Category:Old Leysians Category:People from Portsmouth Category:Slate (magazine) people Category:Socialist Workers Party (UK) members Category:The Nation (U.S. magazine) people Category:University Challenge contestants

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Coordinates	45°30′″N73°40′″N
Honorific prefix	The Honourable
Full name	Nigella Lucy Lawson
Birth name	Nigella Lucy Lawson
Birth date	January 06, 1960
Birth place	London, England
Residence	Chelsea, London, England
Nationality	British
Ethnicity	Jewish
Known for	TV presenting, cookery
Education	MA in mediæval and modern languages
Alma mater	Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford
Employer	BBC (current)Channel 4, ITV (former)
Occupation	Food writer, journalist and broadcaster
Years active	1983–present
Home town	London, UK
Networth	£15 million
Height
Religion	Atheist
Spouse
Children	Cosima and Bruno
Parents	Nigel LawsonVanessa Salmon (deceased)
Relations	Dominic Lawson (brother)A.J. Ayer (mother's widower, deceased)Rosa Monckton (sister-in-law)
Website	www.nigella.com }}

Nigella Lucy Lawson (born 6 January 1960) is an English food writer, journalist and broadcaster. Lawson is the daughter of Nigel Lawson, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Vanessa Salmon, whose family owned the J. Lyons and Co. empire. After graduating from Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University, Lawson started work as a book reviewer and restaurant critic, later becoming the deputy literary editor of ''The Sunday Times'' in 1986. She then embarked upon a career as a freelance journalist, writing for a number of newspapers and magazines. In 1998, Lawson brought out her first cookery book, ''How to Eat'', which sold 300,000 copies and became a bestseller. She went on to write her second book in 2000, ''How to be a Domestic Goddess'', winning her the British Book Award for Author of the Year.

In 2000, she began to host her own cookery series on Channel 4, ''Nigella Bites'', which was accompanied with another bestselling cookery book. The ''Nigella Bites'' series won Lawson a Guild of Food Writers Award; however her 2005 ITV daytime chat show was met with a negative critical reaction and was cancelled after attracting low ratings. Lawson hosted the Food Network's ''Nigella Feasts'' in the United States in 2006 followed by a three-part BBC Two series, ''Nigella's Christmas Kitchen'', in the United Kingdom. This led to the commissioning of ''Nigella Express'' on BBC Two in 2007. Her own cookware range, Living Kitchen, has a value of £7 million, and she has sold more than 3 million cookery books worldwide.

Renowned for her flirtatious manner of presenting, Lawson has been called the "queen of food porn". She is neither a trained chef nor cook, and has assumed a distinctly relaxed approach to her cooking.

Background

Her given name originally being thought up by her grandmother, Nigella Lawson is a daughter of Nigel Lawson, Baron Lawson of Blaby, a Conservative MP, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer in Margaret Thatcher's cabinet, and Vanessa Salmon (1936–1985), a socialite, "celebrated beauty" and heiress to the J. Lyons & Co. fortune. Her family kept homes in Kensington and Chelsea, and were noted for their luxurious life-style. In the 1960s, Peregrine Worsthorne wrote that Vanessa and her daughters looked "as if they had stepped straight out of a Visconti film set". Lawson's parents divorced in 1980. They both remarried; her father in 1980 to a House of Commons researcher, Therese Maclear (to whom he was married until 2008,) and her mother, in the early 1980s, to philosopher, Sir A.J. Ayer (they remained married until her mother's death). With Lawson's father being a prominent politician, some of the things she found most frustrating were the many judgements and pre-conceptions made about her. There was a time when Lawson did not get on with her father, mostly during her parents' divorce, and she became friendly with her mother only when she reached adulthood. Being unhappy as a child has been attributed, by Lawson, partly to the problematic relationship she had with her mother.

Lawson's school years were difficult; she had to move schools nine times between the ages of 9 and 18, spending some of her childhood in the Welsh town of Higher Kinnerton. "I was just difficult, disruptive, good at school work, but rude, I suspect, and too highly-strung", Lawson reflected. Her father originally chose not to believe the reports of her disruptive behaviour and thought the school had the wrong person. Lawson reluctantly attended a private school in the Midlands and later returned to London's Godolphin and Latymer School sixth form where she began to show skill academically. She worked for many department stores in London, and went on to graduate from Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford with a degree in mediæval and modern languages. She also lived in Florence for a period.

Lawson's mother died of liver cancer in Westminster, London, aged 48, when Lawson was 25. Her full-blood siblings are her brother, Dominic, former editor of ''The Sunday Telegraph'', a sister, Horatia and sister Thomasina, who died of breast cancer in 1993 during her early thirties; She has a half-brother Tom, and a half-sister Emily, her father's children by his second wife. Lawson is a cousin to both George Monbiot and Fiona Shackleton through the Salmons.

Taking part in the third series of the BBC family-history documentary series, ''Who Do You Think You Are?'', Lawson sought to uncover some of her family's ancestry. She traced her ancestors to Ashkenazi Jews who originate from eastern Europe and Germany, leaving Lawson surprised not to have Iberian-Sephardi ancestry in the family as she had believed. She also uncovered that her maternal great-great-great grandfather, Coenraad Sammes (later Coleman Joseph), had fled to England from Amsterdam in 1830 to escape a prison sentence following a conviction for theft. It was his daughter, Hannah, who married Samuel Gluckstein, father-in-law and business partner of Barnett Salmon and father of Isidore and Montague Gluckstein, who together with Barnett founded J. Lyons and Co. in 1887.

Career

Early work

Lawson originally worked in publishing, first taking a job under publisher Naim Attallah. At 23, she commenced her journalism career after Charles Moore had invited her to write for ''The Spectator''. Her initial work at the magazine consisted of writing book reviews, after which period she became a restaurant critic there in 1985. She became the deputy literary editor of ''The Sunday Times'' in 1986 at the age of 26. Lawson occasionally drifted into the public's eye, attracting unwanted publicity in 1989 when she admitted voting for Labour in an election as opposed to her father's Conservative Party, and then criticised Margaret Thatcher in print. Regarding her political relationship with her father, Lawson has stated, "My father would never expect me to agree with him about anything in particular. And, to be honest, we never talk about politics much."

After her stint at ''The Sunday Times'', Lawson embarked upon a freelance writing career, realizing that "I was on the wrong ladder. I didn't want to be an executive, being paid to worry rather than think". In the United Kingdom, she wrote for ''The Daily Telegraph'', the ''Evening Standard'', ''The Observer'' and ''The Times Literary Supplement'', and penned a food column for ''Vogue'' and a makeup column for ''The Times Magazine'', as well as working with ''Gourmet'' and ''Bon Appétit'' in the United States. After just two weeks working on Talk Radio in 1995, Lawson was sacked after she had stated her shopping was done for her, which was deemed incompatible with the radio station's desired "common touch".

1998–2002: Cookery writing and ''Nigella Bites''

Lawson had an established sense of cooking from her childhood, having had a mother who enjoyed to cook. Lawson conceived the idea of writing a cookery book after she observed a dinner party host in tears because of an unset crème caramel. ''How to Eat'' was subsequently written in 1998, featuring culinary tips on preparation and saving time. The book became a success and sold 300,000 copies in the UK; ''The Sunday Telegraph'' dubbed it "the most valuable culinary guide published this decade".

Lawson then wrote ''How to be a Domestic Goddess'' in 2000, which focused primarily on baking and also became a bestseller. ''The Times'' wrote, regarding the book and Lawson's approach to its writing, "''How To Be a Domestic Goddess'' ... is defined by its intimate, companionable approach. She is not issuing matronly instructions like Delia; she is merely making sisterly suggestions". Lawson rejected feminist criticism of her book, and stated, "Some people did take the domestic goddess title literally rather than ironically. It was about the pleasures of feeling like one rather than actually being one". The book sold 180,000 copies in four months, and won Lawson the title of Author of the Year at the British Book Awards in 2001, fending off competition from authors such as J. K. Rowling. One commentator suggested she won the award only because her husband was about to die of cancer. Lawson retorted, "I am not against pity, but I have no desire to be tragic". ''How to Eat'' and ''How to be a Domestic Goddess'' were published in America in 2000 and 2001. As a result of the book's success, ''The Observer'' took on Lawson as a social affairs columnist.

Lawson next hosted her own cookery television series, ''Nigella Bites'', which ran from 2000 to 2001 on Channel 4, followed by a Christmas special in 2001. Victor Lewis-Smith, a critic notorious for his biting criticism, commended Lawson for being "formidably charismatic". The first series of ''Nigella Bites'' averaged 1.9 million viewers, and won her the Television Broadcast of the Year at the Guild of Food Writers Awards and the Best Television Food Show at the World Food Media Awards in 2001. The show yielded an accompanying bestselling recipe book, also called ''Nigella Bites'', for which Waterstone's book stores reported UK sales of over 300,000. The book won a W H Smith Award for Lifestyle Book of the Year.

The ''Nigella Bites'' series, which was filmed in her home in west London, was later broadcast on American television on channels E! and Style Network. Lawson said of the US release, "In the UK, my viewers have responded to the fact I'm trying to reduce, not add to, their burden and I'm looking forward to making that connection with Style viewers across the US". Overall, Lawson was well received in the United States. The series was followed by ''Forever Summer with Nigella'' in 2002 on Channel 4, the concept being, "that you cook to make you still feel as though you're on holiday". and increasing to £7 million in 2007.

2003–2006: ''Nigella Feasts'' and BBC contract

In November 2003, Lawson oversaw the menu and preparations for a lunch hosted by Tony Blair at Downing Street for George W. Bush and his wife during their state visit to the UK. Laura Bush is said to be a fan of Lawson's recipes and once included one of her soups as the starter for the 2002 presidential Christmas dinner. Lawson's fifth book, ''Feast Food that Celebrates Life'', released in 2004, made sales worth £3 million. In a positive review, London's ''Evening Standard'' wrote that the book "works both as a practical manual and an engrossing read. ... Nobody else writes so openly about the emotional significance of food". Lawson appeared frequently on American television in 2004, conducting cookery slots on talk shows such as ''The Ellen DeGeneres Show''.

In the UK in 2005, Lawson started to host a daytime television chat show on ITV1 called ''Nigella'', on which celebrity guests joined her in a studio kitchen. The first episode debuted with a disappointing 800,000 viewers. The show was met with a largely negative critical reaction, and after losing 40 percent of its viewers in the first week, the show was cancelled. Lawson later commented in an interview with ''Radio Times'' that on her first show, she was almost too frightened to come out of her dressing room. Lawson further stated that having to pretend to be interested in the lives of the celebrities on her show became too much of an effort. She also discovered, "I can't ever be a presenter, and won't do scripts".

Her third food-based television series, called ''Nigella Feasts'', debuted on the USA's Food Network in Autumn 2006 for a 13-week run. ''Time'' magazine wrote a favorable review of the show; "the real appeal of ''Feasts'' ... is her unfussy, wry, practical approach to entertaining and quality comfort food. ... between the luscious camera shots and Lawson's sensual enjoyment of eating, ''Feasts'' will leave you wishing for an invite". Since the American broadcasting, Lawson signed a £2.5 million deal for the series to be shown in ten other countries across the world.

Lawson was next signed to BBC Two to host a three-part cookery show entitled ''Nigella's Christmas Kitchen'', which began on 6 December 2006 and aired weekly. The first two episodes secured the second highest ratings of the week for BBC Two, with the first episode debuting with a strong 3.5 million. The final episode went on to become the top show on BBC Two the week that it was aired. ''Nigella's Christmas Kitchen'' won Lawson a second World Food Media Award in 2007. Her influence as a food commentator was also demonstrated in late 2006, when after she had lauded goose fat as being an essential ingredient for Christmas, sales percentages of the product increased significantly in the UK. Waitrose and Tesco both stated that goose fat sales had more than doubled, as well as Asda's goose fat sales increasing by 65 percent from the previous week. Similarly, after she advised using prunes in a recipe on ''Nigella's Christmas Kitchen'', Waitrose had increased sales of 30 percent year on year.

2007–2009: ''Nigella Express'' and ''Nigella's Christmas''

''Nigella's Christmas Kitchen'' led to the commissioning of a 13-part cookery series entitled ''Nigella Express''. The series began to air on BBC Two on 3 September 2007, suggesting ways of making simple and quick dishes. Lawson admitted the recipes were not "particularly healthy", although she added, "I wouldn't describe them as junk". The show became another ratings success and one of BBC Two's top-rated shows each week. The first episode debuted with 2.85 million viewers, a high percentage above the channel's slot average. The second episode's viewing figures rose to 3.3 million, and the series peaked at 3.4 million on 22 October 2007. Her influence with the public was again demonstrated when sales of Riesling wine increased by 30 percent in the UK after she had incorporated it into her Coq au Riesling recipe on ''Nigella Express''. Later on a separate occasion, a similar trend was seen in the sales figures of the liqueur Advocaat after Lawson had endorsed it on the show.

The television series of ''Nigella Express'' was subject to criticism from the ''Daily Mail'' when it emerged that a bus Lawson was seen travelling on during the programme had been hired and filled with extras. The producers responded by saying, "This series is a factual entertainment cooking show, not an observational documentary and it is perfectly normal procedure". There was further controversy when it was revealed that the kitchens in which Lawson was seen cooking were in two separate locations; one in her home and the other in a London television studio. Lawson also came under criticism when viewers complained that she had gained weight since the debut episode of the series. Critics criticised the series for containing what they described as "scenes of gluttony not seen since the golden age of the Cookie Monster" and commenting that her "largesse may have left her just that little bit larger." ''The Guardian'' however, noted, "the food matches her appearance — flawless, polished and sexy". The rights to ''Nigella Express'' have been sold to the Food Network in America, and to Discovery Asia. The series was nominated at the 35th Daytime Emmy Awards in the United States for Outstanding Lifestyle Program, and Lawson herself for the Outstanding Lifestyle Host.

The accompanying book to ''Nigella Express'' was released in the UK in September 2007, America in November 2007, and later in Australia in 2008. Sharing the same name as the television series, the book became another bestseller in the UK, and was outselling another television chef, Jamie Oliver, by 100,000 copies according to Waterstone's. It was reported that over 490,000 copies had been sold by mid-December in the UK. Furthermore, the book was number one for a period on Amazon UK's bestselling books, and was ninth on their overall list of Christmas bestsellers in any category. Paul Levy from ''The Guardian'' wrote that the tone of the recipes was "just right. One of the appealing things about Nigella's brief introductions to each of them is that she thinks not just as cook, but as eater, and tells you whether they're messy, sticky or fussy". Lawson is now estimated to have sold more than 3 million books worldwide. Her Christmas book was released in October 2008 and the television show in December of the same year. An American edition of the book "Nigella Christmas" with a different cover photograph was released in November 2009 with an accompanying book tour of several US cities and a special on the USA's Food Network.

Presenting style and image

Though Lawson has enjoyed a successful career in cookery, she is not a trained chef, and does not like being referred to as a "celebrity chef". Furthermore, she does not see herself as a cook or an expert in her field. Throughout Lawson's television programmes, she emphasises that she cooks for her own pleasure, for enjoyment, and that she finds cooking therapeutic. When deciding upon which recipes to feature in her books, she takes the view of the eater, stating, "If it's something I don't want to carry on eating once I'm full, then I don't want the recipe... I have to feel that I want to cook the thing again".

Lawson has adopted a casual approach to cooking, stating, "I think cooking should be about fun and family. ... I think part of my appeal is that my approach to cooking is really relaxed and not rigid. There are no rules in my kitchen". One editor, highlighting the technical simplicity of Lawson's recipes, noted that "her dishes require none of the elaborate preparation called for by most TV chefs".

Lawson has become renowned for her flirtatious manner of presenting, although she argues, "It’s not meant to be flirtatious. ... I don’t have the talent to adopt a different persona. It's intimate, not flirtatious". The perceived overt sexuality of her presentation style has led to Lawson's being called the "queen of food porn". Many commentators have alluded to Lawson's attractiveness, and she was once named as one of the world's most beautiful women. She has been referred to as "stunningly beautiful, warm, honest, likeable and amazingly normal", as well as being described as having "flawless skin, perfect white teeth, a voluptuous body, ample height and lots of lush, brown hair". The media has also noted Lawson's ability to engage with both male and female viewers; ''The Guardian'' wrote, "Men love her because they want to be with her. Women love her because they want to be her". The chef, Gary Rhodes, spoke out against Lawson by suggesting that her viewers take preference to her smile rather than the cooking itself. Despite often being labelled as a domestic goddess, she insists that she exhibits very few of the qualities associated with the title. as one critic summarized, "her descriptions of food can be a tangle of adjectives." In a study conducted in 2007 on the readability of different recipes, the chatty and florid style of Lawson's recipes was judged to be confusing to readers with weak reading skills. Lawson has also expressed her surprise at how many reviews in the United States have mentioned her class and posh accent.

Comedians and commentators have taken to mocking Lawson's style of presentation, particularly in a regularly occurring impersonation of her in the BBC comedy series ''Dead Ringers'', because they perceive that she plays overtly upon her attractiveness and sexuality as a device to engage viewers of her cookery programmes. Impressions by Ronni Ancona that further parodied Lawson's presenting style have also been featured on the BBC One impersonation sketch show, ''The Big Impression''.

Lawson met journalist John Diamond in 1986, when they were both writing for ''The Sunday Times''. They married in Venice in 1992, and had two children together, both born in Hammersmith, London: Cosima Thomasina (born 1994) and Bruno Paul (born 1996). Diamond was diagnosed with throat cancer in 1997, and died of the disease in March 2001, aged 47. One of his last messages to Lawson was, "How proud I am of you and what you have become. The great thing about us is that we have made us who we are." His death occurred during the filming of ''Nigella Bites''; "I took a fortnight off. But I'm not a great believer in breaks," Lawson explained, but she did suffer a bout of depression. After his death, Lawson kept all of the press clippings in what she called her "Morbidobox".

Lawson married art collector Charles Saatchi in September 2003, having drawn disapproval when she moved in with him nine months after Diamond's death. Lawson had also come under criticism when it was suggested she started her relationship with Saatchi before Diamond's death. Saatchi is worth a reputed £100 million, while Lawson is worth £15 million as of 2007, £8 million of which came from book sales. It widely began circulating in the media in early 2008 that Lawson had been quoted as saying her two children should not inherit any of the fortune. She strongly denied these plans in a statement on her personal website, which read, "Of course I have no intention of leaving my children destitute and starving — rather, this is a story that came from a comment I made about my belief that you have to work in order to learn the value of money".

Although both of Lawson's parents are Jewish, Judaism has played no significant part religiously in her life, but she believes that she has developed a somewhat "Jewish character". She was brought up without any religion and she considers herself an atheist. In one of her newspaper articles, she has shown a liberal attitude to sexuality ("most [women] simply have, somewhere, a fantasy about having sex, in a non-defining, non-exclusive way, with other women"). She has said that she often partakes in watching football and is an avid supporter of Chelsea.

Lawson is a supporter of the Lavender Trust which gives support to young women with breast cancer. She first became involved with the charity in 2002 when she baked some lavender cupcakes to be auctioned at a fundraising event, which sold for a significant amount of money. She subsequently featured the recipe in her book, ''Forever Summer with Nigella''.

It was revealed by leaked Whitehall documents in 2003 that Lawson declined an OBE from Queen Elizabeth II in 2001. As the daughter of a life peer, Nigella is entitled to the courtesy title of "The Honourable" and is thus styled The Hon. Nigella Lawson. However she does not use this courtesy title.

In December 2008, Lawson caused major controversy and was featured in various newspapers for publicly advocating wearing fur. Lawson also remarked that she would love to kill a bear and then wear it.

Lawson was featured as one of the three judges on the special battle of ''Iron Chef America'', titled "The Super Chef Battle", which pitted White House Executive Chef Christeta Comerford and Iron Chef Bobby Flay against super chef Emeril Lagasse and Iron Chef Mario Batali, which was originally broadcast on January 3, 2010.

In January 2011, Lawson and her husband Charles Saatchi moved from Belgravia to Chelsea.

Television credits

! Year	! Programme	! Episodes	! Duration
2000	''Nigella Bites''	5 episodes, Series 1	30 minutes
2001	''Nigella Bites''	10 episodes, Series 2	30 minutes
2001	''Nigella Bites Christmas Special''	1 episode	60 minutes
2002	''Forever Summer''	8 episodes	30 minutes
2005	''Nigella''	20 episodes	60 minutes
2006	''Nigella Feasts''	13 episodes	30 minutes
2006	''Nigella's Christmas Kitchen''	3 episodes, Series 1	30 minutes
2007	''Nigella Express''	13 episodes	30 minutes
2008	''Nigella's Christmas Kitchen''	3 episodes, Series 2	30 minutes
2009		1 episode	42 minutes
2010		1 episode	120 minutes
2010	''Nigella Kitchen''	13 episodes	30 minutes
2011	''MasterChef Australia Season 3''	1 episode	60 minutes

Awards

2000: British Book Award — Author of the Year for ''How to be a Domestic Goddess''

2001: WH Smith Book Award — ''How To Be A Domestic Goddess'' shortlisted for Lifestyle Book of the Year

2001: Guild of Food Writers — Television Broadcast of the Year for ''Nigella Bites

2001: World Food Media Award — Gold Ladle Best Television Food Show for ''Nigella Bites''

2002: WH Smith Book Awards — Lifestyle Book of the Year for ''Nigella Bites''

2007: World Food Media Award — Gold Ladle Best Food And/Or Drink Television Show for ''Nigella's Christmas Kitchen''

Bibliography

''How to Eat: Pleasures and Principles of Good Food'', Chatto and Windus, John Wiley & Sons, (ISBN 0-471-25750-8, 1998)

''How to Be a Domestic Goddess: Baking and the Art of Comfort Cooking'', Chatto and Windus, (ISBN 0-7011-6888-9, 2000)

''Nigella Bites'', Chatto and Windus, (ISBN 0-7011-7287-8, 2001)

''Forever Summer with Nigella'', Chatto and Windus, (ISBN 0-7011-7381-5, 2002)

''Feast: Food to Celebrate Life'', Chatto and Windus, (ISBN 0-7011-7521-4, 2004) or Hyperion (ISBN 1-4013-0136-3, 2004)

''Nigella Lawson, A Biography'', Gilly Smith (ISBN 1-56980-299-8, 2006)

''Nigella Express'', Chatto and Windus, (ISBN 0-7011-8184-2, 2007)

''Nigella Christmas'', Chatto and Windus (ISBN 0-7011-8322-5, 2008)

''Kitchen: Recipes from the Heart of the Home'', Chatto and Windus (ISBN 0-7011-8460-4, 2010)

References

External links

Official website

Profile on ''bbc.co.uk''

''Nigella Express'' official website

''Nigella's Christmas Kitchen'' official website

Nigella Lawson on ''Who Do You Think You Are?'' at ''bbc.co.uk''

Profile at Random House Australia

Category:1960 births Category:Living people Category:Alumni of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford Category:British Book Award winners Category:Daughters of barons Category:English atheists Category:English chefs Category:English food writers Category:English Jews Category:English people of German descent Category:English people of Dutch descent Category:English journalists Category:English television chefs Category:English television presenters Category:Food Network chefs Category:Jewish atheists Category:Old Dolphins Category:Old Westminsters Category:The Sunday Times people Category:English Jews

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