BBC: Do you fear death?
HITCHENS: No I’m not afraid of being dead that’s to say nothing to be afraid of. I won’t know I’m dead in my strong conviction. I won’t- and if I find that I’m alive in any way at all, well, that’ll be a pleasant surprise. And I quite like surprises. But I strongly take leave to doubt it.
In November 2010, the writer Christopher Hitchens, then dying of cancer, gave this long interview to Jeremy Paxman. Filmed at Hitchens’s home in New York, it was a wide-ranging discussion, with Hitchens characteristically unflinching in his exploration of contemporary controversies, as well as his own illness and death.