Hitchens v. Hitchens

Christopher – whose lifestyle with second wife Carol Blue was recently described in a recent profile in The New Yorker as that which "a spirited thirteen-year-old boy might hope adulthood to be"– has, until recently at least, been considered in bien-pensant circles as the more fashionable Hitchens brother.
Peter is dubbed "Bonkers" in opinion columns by his colleagues in the British press. This tactic, he says, is the old Soviet trick of dismissing outsiders as madmen. He has long been viewed as a right-wing monster, the kind you'd never have round the house, for fear of him saying something offensive. Like many assumptions about the Hitchens brothers, it is false. He is a loner, but the fact that Peter may actually be likeable is one of Fleet Street's best kept secrets.
Similarly, myths surround Christopher, chief among them that he's a hopeless drunk. While he has admitted that he regularly drinks enough to "stun or kill a mule", he defends his professionalism fiercely, pointing out that he has "never missed a deadline".
In so many ways, politically, literally, religiously, the Hitchens brothers are miles apart. Occasionally they come together and clash in public. But whichever way the ever-changing, unpredictable new world order spins, it's a safe bet that they at least, will remain permanently in opposition.