While the topics will be familiar terrain to those who've read their fair share of Hitchens, A Hitch in Time nevertheless succeeds in pulling previously uncollected essays into a new and enjoyable volume. Despite the subtitle, which informs us that all the essays were previously published in the London Review of Books, A Hitch in Time is not merely a commentary on literature in the way that, for example, Unacknowledged Legislation was. Hitchens uses the opportunity of reviewing then-contemporary book releases to expand upon various topics, including the Oklahoma City bombing, J. Edgar Hoover and the Oscar award circus. (Regarding the latter, it's peculiar to see him write, however briefly, about Groundhog Day and Forrest Gump. They come from a different universe to Hitchens.) We get an indictment of JFK's administration and an account of Hitchens being spanked by then-Opposition leader Margaret Thatcher ("nothing that happened to the country in the next dozen years surprised me in the least" (pg. 83)). Of the twenty essays included, only five are overtly concerned with prominent authors.

There is, as I intimated earlier, a sense of over-familiarity with the topics: other essays discuss favourite Hitchens scratching-posts like the monarchy, Bill Clinton and Salman Rushdie. But they're all fluent and entertaining pieces (well, mostly: the Isaiah Berlin piece – by far the longest – was a chore). The book never feels like a shallow corral of essays which didn't make the cut in previous collections – which should be reassuring to prospective readers worried about their possible gullibility – and it has a sense of unity and continuity. Eighteen of the essays span the Nineties, bookended by one from 1983 and one from 2002, and if Hitchens in these pages is not yet the popular, battle-ready public intellectual he became in the post-9/11 decade, he is nevertheless a compelling presence. While I can't help but feel Hitchens would dislike the trite pun in the title, A Hitch in Time possesses enough quality writing to overcome any cynicism I had about its publication. ( )