SOURCE: “The Life and Work of Paul Johnson,” in Critical Quarterly, Vol. 31, No. 4, Winter, 1989, pp. 87–92.

In the following negative review of Intellectuals, Hitchens attacks Johnson's mean-spirited prurience and hypocritical personal conduct.

In a novel called Left of Centre which is now, to the relief of its publisher and author alike, safely out of print, Paul Johnson wrote what is generally agreed to be the most embarrassing spanking scene ever penned. The eclipse of that otherwise unreadable novel did nothing to dim the memory of the cringe-making episode, which was continually recalled to mind by Johnson's public and social behaviour. This often involved drunken and boorish conduct towards women, including his wife. On a famous occasion in a Greek restaurant in Charlotte Street in 1973, he struck her across the face for disagreeing with him in public and, when rebuked for this by a colleague of mine, threatened to put...