Christopher Hitchens tributes: ‘The world has lost one of its most outstanding journalists’ (video)

Tributes are being paid to journalist, polemicist, atheist and left-wing campaigner Christopher Hitchens – who died last night.

Vanity Fair, the magazine where Hitchens was a contributing editor, today produced this video tribute:

In his last article for the Vanity Fair on December the 7 he wrote:

‘So far, I have decided to take whatever my disease can throw at me, and to stay combative even while taking the measure of my inevitable decline.”

George Eaton, writing in the New Statesman, said: “The world has lost one of its most outstanding and prolific journalists and a wonderful polemicist, orator and bon vivant.“

Christopher Buckley writing in the New Yorker said: “We were friends for more than thirty years, which is a long time but, now that he is gone, seems not nearly long enough.”

On Twitter Stephen Fry said: “Goodbye, Christopher Hitchens. You were envied, feared, adored, reviled and loved. Never ignored. Never bested. A great and marvellous man”.

The Telegraph and The Guardian are publishing rolling tributes from among others deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, MP Denis Macshane, novelist Tony Parsons and former Sun editor David Yelland.