SOURCE: D'Ancona, Matthew. “A Dandy Defender of Freedom.” Times Literary Supplement (25 June 1993): 26–27.

In the following review, D'Ancona offers a generally favorable assessment of For the Sake of Argument.

Although the fly-leaf of this new collection of essays [For the Sake of Argument] describes Christopher Hitchens variously as a “lazy Balliol dandy,” “the most compelling foreign correspondent we have,” and “the nearest thing to a journalistic one-man band since I. F. Stone,” my favourite image (not included in this book) is of the cub reporter, recently down from Oxford and longing for action, who instead found himself bored out of his mind working on the polytechnics desk of the Times Higher Education Supplement. According to colleagues of the time, the Higher and Hitchens gained in almost equal measure from their decision to part company.

I mention this not out of malice but fellow feeling, since, as another former education...