In one of the odder passages in his memoir, Hitch-22, the prolific Anglo-American journalist Christopher Hitchens defines a meaningful life as one that includes “friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others.” This doesn’t add up. Battling for the liberation of others is a vocation for those who are committed, unbending, and (too often) humorless; irony is the mood of the wit, the cynic, the fellow who is putting you on. For four decades, Hitchens has tried both. He writes lapidary, aphoristic, and even hilarious essays on questions that he presents as no laughing matter.

So which is the real Hitchens? The salon wag or the Jeremiah? Should we think of him primarily as a creative writer or as a logic-chopper? These questions became more pressing after Hitchens changed from a Trotskyite supporter of Third World liberation movements into the most eloquent journalistic defender of George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003. While many readers awakened to the elegance of his prose and the power of his arguments, others say they always knew him for a reactionary skunk. Hitchens’s ambiguity has its roots in the upheaval of the England into which he was born in 1949. It is impressive how clearly he sees that.

Hitchens notes that his family belongs to what Orwell called the “insecure and anxious layer of old England.”

Hitchens notes that his family belongs to what