One night in pre-gentrified Notting Hill, circa 1979 or 1980, Christopher Hitchens was
walking home from dinner at our house when he saw a man beating up a woman. Never one to back away from battle, physical or verbal, Christopher took a swing at the woman’s attacker. He was pleased
to have spared her further savagery from the brute, until the woman told him to mind his own business and offered succour to her boyfriend. I think Christopher ended up with a black eye, but I
forget which of the pair administered it.
The neighbourhood lost a vital element when he moved to New York (and later Washington) not long afterwards. He’d have hated the new Notting Hill anyway, and London wasn’t big enough to contain his wit, his ambition and his interest in the great globe.
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