'I am not fighting or battling cancer - it is fighting me': Last words of author Christopher Hitchens as he faced the end



He used hospital food tray as desk for computer to write witty thoughts

'Lost 14lbs without trying... thin at last, but I don't feel lighter'



He was an impossible act to follow, says his widow Carol Blue



Witty: Writer Christopher Hitchens wrote of his cancer using a hospital food tray for his desk

As he faced death from cancer, author and journalist Christopher Hitchens kept his wry sense of humour to the very end, it emerged today.



He used a hospital food tray as a desk for his computer to record his last thoughts about the illness which claimed his life at 62.

Hitchens, a smoker, described the disease as a 'vulgar little tumour' and 'the alien' that was 'burrowing into me even as I wrote the jaunty words about my own prematurely announced death.'

In his fragmentary jottings, published in the Daily Telegraph, he wrote: 'I am not fighting or battling cancer, it is fighting me. My two assets were my pen and my voice.'



The British-born writer and essayist died from pneumonia, a complication of his oesophageal cancer, at a Texas hospital.

But he lost none of his wit and trenchant views as he faced the end of his life. In his final book, Mortality, he wrote: 'Lost 14lbs without trying. Thin at last. But I don't feel lighter because walking to the fridge is like a forced march.

'All the sleep-aids and blissful dozes seem somehow a waste of life - plenty of future time in which to be unconscious.'

Hitchens knew he was dying but saw the funny side of all the glowing praise for his literary work. 'Now so many tributes that it also seems that rumours of my LIFE have also been greatly exaggerated.

'Lived to see most of what's going to be written about me: this too is exhilarating, but hits diminishing returns when I realise how soon it, too will be "background."'



Couple: Carol Blue and her 'dazzling' husband, the essayist and author Christopher Hitchens

The author of 17 books, including God is Not Great, The Trial of Henry Kissinger, How Religion Poisons Everything, and a memoir, Hitch-22, still wrestled with the questions of faith and death.

God Is Not Great made him a major celebrity in his adopted homeland of the U.S. and he happily took on the role of the country's best-known atheist.

He wrote: 'Those who say I am being punished are saying that god can't think of anything more vengeful than cancer for a heavy smoker.'

His widow Carol Blue, writing in the Daily Telegraph, described her husband as 'dazzling' and how his charisma never left him 'in any realm.'

Author: God Is Not Great made Hitchens a celebrity in America where he became the best-known atheist



She described running towards him down a street in Manhattan, New York, during a book tour when she caught sight of him in his white suit.

They found out he had cancer on the first day of the tour and she tells how he coped with the illness for 19 months before his final trip to hospital which he though would be a brief stay.



She said he was an 'impossible act to follow' and revealed that her husband 'insisted ferociously on living.'

He maintained his devout atheism after being diagnosed with cancer, telling one interviewer: 'No evidence or argument has yet been presented which would change my mind. But I like surprises.'

Family: Christopher, left, and Peter Hitchens. Peter admired his brother's courage, a 'virtue he possessed to the very end'

The author and prominent atheist Richard Dawkins described him as the 'finest orator of our time" and a 'valiant fighter against all tyrants including God'.

His brother Peter, the Mail On Sunday columnist and writer, paid a tribute shortly after his death last December. In this extract he wrote: Here’s a thing I will say now without hesitation, unqualified and important. The one word that comes to mind when I think of my brother is ‘courage’.



'The one word that comes to mind when I think of my brother is 'courage.' I don't have much of this myself so I recognise it (and envy it) in others'

By this I don’t mean the lack of fear which some people have, which enables them to do very dangerous or frightening things because they have no idea what it is to be afraid. I mean a courage which overcomes real fear, while actually experiencing it.



I don’t have much of this myself, so I recognise it (and envy it) in others.



He would always rather fight than give way, not for its own sake but because it came naturally to him. Like me, he was small for his age during his entire childhood and I have another memory of him, white-faced, slight and thin as we all were in those more austere times, furious, standing up to some bully or other in the playground of a school we attended at the same time.



This explains plenty. I offer it because the word ‘courage’ is often misused today. People sometimes tell me that I have been ‘courageous’ to say something moderately controversial in a public place. Not a bit of it. This is not courage. Courage is deliberately taking a known risk, sometimes physical, sometimes to your livelihood, because you think it is too important not to.

