Should I sue Richard Dawkins for calling me a 'liar for Jesus'?

I wrote last week, in a piece about atheistic piety, that 'just before he died, Christopher Hitchens expressed some generous sympathy for the Christian worldview, much to the evident frustration of his interlocutor Richard Dawkins.'

The celebrity atheist Professor Dawkins has since replied that 'that's a barefaced lie: classic "lying for Jesus"'. He then raves on about how Hitchens called him 'very distinguished'.

I can see how he would have preferred that last passage. But I returned to the Christmas edition of the New Statesman to ensure that I hadn't made a dreadful mistake and misrepresented the late, great Mr Hitchens.

Dawkins has a shrill hysteria with which he engages with Christians

And there, in other passages that Dawkins either chooses not to recall or overlooks, the Hitch finds time to admire the theologian C.S.Lewis for his intellectual honesty, says that there's 'something about their honesty that we wish we could find' in riposte to the cheap shot from Dawkins that Christians are 'fundamentalists', notes (twice) that atheists shouldn't 'condescend' to people of faith and, most tellingly, has this to say: 'I know a lot of very educated, very prosperous, very thoughtful people who believe.'

Thoughtful: Hitchens, despite remaining an outspoken atheist, expressed some generous sympathy for the Christian worldview before he died

I don't deny that elsewhere in the interview Mr Hitchens finds much time and space to express his robust atheism and antipathy towards organised religion. But it seems to me that this thoughtful and well-read man was also being generous-spirited and gracious towards those of us who take a different view, in marked contrast to the aggressive ill-tolerance of Dawkins. Note that elsewhere in the interview, Dawkins speculates 'if we win and, so to speak, destroy Christianity...', which is not an aim that Hitchens evidently shared.

Maybe someone has posed as Dawkins and posted a parody of him in response to my piece. In which case, I apologise for misrepresenting him. But it does sound like him - it has that shrill hysteria with which he engages with Christians. Or maybe Dawkins hasn't listened to Hitchens or read his own interview, though that seems unlikely as he was guest editor of that edition of the magazine.

But to call me a liar and add the insult that I'm 'lying for Jesus' is a very serious defamation, which he has published publicly. That's very damaging and not a little mad.