Christopher Hitchens, with whom I disagreed on religion but found an ally on issues like national security and support for western values, has died.

Vanity Fair, for which he was a columnist, reports the author and critic has succumbed to esophageal cancer more than one year after he was diagnosed. He was 62-years-old.

Vanity Fair remarks:

“My chief consolation in this year of living dyingly has been the presence of friends,” he wrote in the June 2011 issue. He died in their presence, too, at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. May his 62 years of living, well, so livingly console the many of us who will miss him dearly.

Rest in peace, good sir. And may you now know the loving embrace of the Almighty.