Of necessity, his last book (though I suppose a collection of miscellany could still, and perhaps already has, come out; but that wouldn’t have been written last).

Am amazing stylist and, equally or more important, a master of his craft. There are plenty of talented writers who never properly learned their craft and any decent reader can quickly discern the difference.

Mortality is not an example of Hitchens the craftsman.

Do you think that I wanted to write that? Do you think I don’t know that he was dying and in terrible pain when he wrote it?

Of course I do. And I miss him. How much could we have used his withering, penetrating, trenchant, cigarette smoky voice in the Age of Trump?

Try Arguably. His final, to my knowledge, collection of essays.

There are still wonderful moments here, but it is a reminder of what we now miss, rather than an example of it.