Author Christopher Hitchens Dead At 62

Controversial British writer Christopher Hitchens, 62, who wrote frequently for magzines, published essays and appeared on television to give his insightful and witty commentary on a wide range or topics, died Thursday at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston after a battle with esophageal cancer, Vanity Fair reports.

Hitchens' most recent book— his eleventh — was called Hitch-22 and published in spring 2010. As a public intellectual Hitchens often held controversial and challenging opinions; he described himself as an "internationalist socialist" but also supported the war in Iraq, according to EW.com. A staunch opponent of organized religion and Christianity, Hitchens published a book called God Is Not Great in 2007.

A Royal Navy brat who was educated at Oxford, Hitchens leaves behind three children — Alexander, Sophia, and Antonia — and many famous friends, including Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Richard Dawkins, James Fenton and Christopher Buckley.

Buckley said that his late friend was a prodigious talent who touched many people. "Yes, everything he said was brilliant," Buckley wrote in the New Yorker. "It was a feast of reason and a flow of soul, and, if the author of God Is Not Great did not himself believe in the concept of soul, he sure had one, and it was a great soul."

Watch a clip of some of Hitchens' televised appearances here: