Peter Hitchens

Peter Hitchens was born in Malta, where his father, Eric Ernest Hitchens (1909–1987), a naval officer, was stationed as part of the then Mediterranean Fleet of the Royal Navy.

His mother, Yvonne Jean Hitchens (née Hickman; 1921–1973), had met Eric while serving in the Women's Royal Naval Service (Wrens) during the Second World War.

As a youth, Hitchens wanted to be an officer in the Royal Navy, following his father.

However, when he was 10, he learned he had a lazy eye that could not be corrected, thereby barring him from serving in the Royal Navy.

Though his brother Christopher was quick to embrace his Jewish identity following the principle of matrilineal descent, Peter noted that they were only one-32nd Jewish by descent and has not identified as Jewish himself.

Hitchens' only sibling was the journalist and author Christopher Hitchens, who was two years older.

Peter Jonathan Hitchens (born 28 October 1951) is an English conservative author, broadcaster, journalist, and commentator.

He writes for The Mail on Sunday and was a foreign correspondent reporting from both Moscow and Washington, D.C. Peter Hitchens has contributed to The Spectator, The American Conservative, The Guardian, First Things, Prospect, and the New Statesman. His books include The Abolition of Britain, The Rage Against God, The War We Never Fought and The Phoney Victory.

Peter was a member of the International Socialists (forerunners of the modern Socialist Workers' Party) from 1968 to 1975 (beginning at age 17) after Christopher introduced him to them.

Hitchens attended Mount House School, Tavistock, The Leys School, and the Oxford College of Further Education before being accepted at the University of York, where he studied Philosophy and Politics and was a member of Alcuin College, graduating in 1973.

He joined the Labour Party in 1977 but left shortly after campaigning for Ken Livingstone in 1979, thinking it was wrong to carry a party card when directly reporting politics, and coinciding with a culmination of growing personal disillusionment with the Labour movement.

Hitchens began his journalistic career on the local press in Swindon and then at the Coventry Evening Telegraph.

He then worked for the Daily Express between 1977 and 2000, initially as a reporter specialising in education and industrial and labour affairs, then as a political reporter, and subsequently as deputy political editor.

Hitchens married Eve Ross in 1983.

They have a daughter and two sons.

Their elder son, Dan, was editor of the Catholic Herald, a London-based Roman Catholic newspaper.

Hitchens lives in Oxford.

Hitchens was brought up in the Christian faith and attended Christian boarding schools but became an atheist, beginning to leave his faith at 15.

He returned to church later in life, and is now an Anglican and a member of the Church of England.

Hitchens has Jewish descent via his maternal grandmother, a daughter of Polish Jewish migrants.

His grandmother revealed this fact upon meeting his wife Eve Ross.

Previously a socialist and supporter of the Labour Party, Hitchens became more conservative during the 1990s.

Leaving parliamentary journalism to cover defence and diplomatic affairs, he reported on the decline and collapse of communist regimes in several Warsaw Pact countries, which culminated in a stint as Moscow correspondent and reporting on life there during the final months of the Soviet Union and the early years of the Russian Federation in 1990–92.

He took part in reporting the UK 1992 general election, closely following Neil Kinnock.

He then became the Daily Express Washington correspondent.

Returning to Britain in 1995, he became a commentator and columnist.

Hitchens reported from Somalia at the time of the United Nations intervention in the Somali Civil War.

He joined the Conservative Party in 1997 and left in 2003, and has since been deeply critical of the party, which he views as the biggest obstacle to true conservatism in the UK.

Hitchens describes himself as a Burkean conservative, social democrat, and Anglo Gaullist.

His conservative Christian political views, such as his opposition to same-sex marriage and support of stricter recreational drug policies, have been met with criticism and debate in the United Kingdom.

Hitchens criticised the UK's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, especially lockdowns and mandates that the public wear face masks.

In 2000, Hitchens left the Daily Express after its acquisition by Richard Desmond, stating that working for him would have represented a moral conflict of interest.

The brothers fell out after Peter wrote a 2001 article in The Spectator which allegedly characterised Christopher as a Stalinist.

After the birth of Peter's third child, the two brothers reconciled.

Peter's review of his brother's book God Is Not Great led to a public argument between the brothers but no renewed estrangement.

Christopher said in 2005 that the main difference between the two was belief in the existence of God.

In 2007, the brothers appeared as panellists on BBC TV's Question Time, where they clashed on a number of issues.

In 2008, in the US, they debated the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the existence of God.

In 2010 at the Pew Research Center, the pair debated the nature of God in civilisation.

Christopher died in 2011; at a memorial service held for him in New York, Peter Read St Paul's Philippians 4:8, which Christopher had read at their father's funeral.