An ogre, nonetheless

It became apparent that the academic and journalist Christopher Hitchens was regretting having agreed to appear on Great Lives on Radio Four last week (Tuesday) with Leon Trotsky as his choice for Great Life status. He couldn't really explain why someone whom Churchill described as 'an ogre of international subversion' was so great, apart from the fact that he was 'a man of action but also a man of ideas. He was a tremendous foreign and war correspondent.' He was, too, 'an exemplar of the non-fatalist Jew. The Jew who wouldn't be pushed around, who fights back.' But when pressed by the present...