And one tends not to pick up a book in order to pick a fight with it, especially if it is - pace Runciman - highly entertaining to read. One would not wish to get into an argument with him in front of an audience of any size, as one would very probably end up looking foolish (Tony Blair never sounded so negligible as he did when debating the value of religion on stage with Hitchens in Toronto a few months ago). Well, these are all points worthy of being addressed, and Hitchens gives a good account of himself here. Another reviewer pointed out that Hitchens has been consistently in the wrong about Iraq: wrong in 2003 when he supported the war, wrong in 1991 when he opposed the first Gulf war, and wrong in considering the Baathist regime in 1970s Iraq progressive. Of course, his spectacular conversion, if that is the word, from left to right, if that is how to put it, has dismayed many of his former comrades or colleagues, and a good deal of his career since 9/11 has been spent pugnaciously defending himself against the outrage visited upon him for becoming, inter alia, a flag-waver for the second Gulf war. I consider Runciman no slouch, although privately wondered how it could be possible that Hitchens could produce an unlikeable book. T wo things, penury aside, stopped me buying this book when it came out in hardback: the title, and a withering review in the London Review of Books by David Runciman, the gist of which was that the book was self-serving, not intentionally funny, and - his closing words - "very hard to like, never mind love".
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