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Like a restorative, extended spa treatment, this revisiting of a selection of diaries and essay-reviews from the London Review of Books stretches tired brains. Christopher Hitchens was a star writer wherever he wrote and he contributed 60 pieces over two decades to the LRB. Anthologised here for the first time are reviews, diaries and essays along with a smattering of ferocious letters. Familiar bêtes noires - Kennedy, Nixon, Kissinger, Clinton - rub shoulders with lesser-known preoccupations - P. G. Wodehouse, Princess Margaret and Isaiah Berlin. Here is Hitchens on the first Gulf War and the Salman Rushdie Acid Test, on being spanked by Mrs Thatcher in the House of Lords, and taking his son to the Oscars, on America's homegrown Nazis and 'Acts of Violence in Grosvenor Square' in 1968. Barnstorming, cauterising and ultimately uncontainable journalism, he truly was an original of his time. 340pp, paperback, illus.