There’s always one that sticks in your mind, and here is the one that did it

best for me in January.

“In a long life Spender never quite succeeded in overcoming the widespread

impression (which he may have privately shared) that there was something

vaguely preposterous about him.”

—-From Christopher Hitchens’s review of STEPHEN SPENDER: THE AUTHORIZED

BIOGRAPHY by John Sutherland, in the current (Jan/Feb ‘05) issue of The

Atlantic Monthly.

Hitchens is a brilliant writer.