{"id":2387,"date":"2007-06-03T05:49:14","date_gmt":"2007-06-03T10:49:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/2007\/06\/03\/hitchens-vs-hitchens\/"},"modified":"2007-06-03T05:49:14","modified_gmt":"2007-06-03T10:49:14","slug":"hitchens-vs-hitchens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/2007\/06\/hitchens-vs-hitchens\/","title":{"rendered":"Hitchens vs Hitchens"},"content":{"rendered":"

Daily Mail<\/a> | Peter Hitchens | June 2, 2007 |<\/p>\n

Am I my brother\u2019s reviewer? A word of explanation is needed here. Some of you may know that I have a brother, Christopher, who disagrees with me about almost everything. <\/p>\n

Some of those who read his books and articles also know that I exist, though they often dislike me if so. But in general we inhabit separate worlds \u2013 in more ways than one. <\/p>\n

He is of the Left, lives in the United States and recently became an American citizen. I am of the Right and, after some years in Russia and America, live in the heart of England. Occasionally we clash in public. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We disagreed about the Iraq War \u2013 he was for it, I was against it. Despite the occasional temptation, I have never reviewed any of his books until today. <\/p>\n

But now, in God Is Not Great, he has written about religion itself, attacking it as a stupid delusion. <\/p>\n

This case, I feel, needs an answer. Most of the British elite will applaud, since they see religion as an embarrassing and (worse) unfashionable form of mania. <\/p>\n

And I am no less qualified to defend God than Christopher is to attack him, neither of us being experts on the subject. <\/p>\n

People sometimes ask how two brothers, born less than three years apart, should have come to such different conclusions. <\/p>\n

To which I\u2019d answer that I\u2019m not sure they\u2019re as different as they look, and that it\u2019s not over yet. <\/p>\n

Christopher has quite often written and spoken about our upbringing and background, whereas I haven\u2019t, but I think I\u2019m now entitled to give a small account of what we have in common. <\/p>\n

Because my father was in the Navy, we were brought up in a very old-fashioned Britain. Looking back, it often seems to have been a sombre landscape of grey warships and the stench of fuel-oil \u2013 but also of cathedral towers, bells and choral evensong. <\/p>\n

. . . more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Daily Mail | Peter Hitchens | June 2, 2007 | Am I my brother\u2019s reviewer? A word of explanation is needed here. Some of you may know that I have a brother, Christopher, who disagrees with me about almost everything. Some of those who read his books and articles also know that I exist, though … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1319,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1319"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2387\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}