July 13, 2003

When Clinton and Christopher Hitchens Rutted in the Same Quarter of the Forest

Roz Kaveney Delivers the Dish on the Hitchens Clinton Connection

A LiveJournal item by Roz Kaveney heaps up some decades-old dish on Bill Clinton and Christopher Hitchens. Kaveney declares herself no ravening fan of Clinton, but it is also clear that she doesn't currently find Hitchens to her taste at all.

The most interesting part of the long entry is her snapshot of Bill and Christopher during the time they shared Oxford and perhaps more many long years ago.

In 1968, when I arrived at Oxford as a gangling skinny Northerner with serious sexual identity problems, I went to a lot of political meetings. You could hardly not notice Hitchens - he was charismatic, and beautiful, and passionate in his denunciations of the Americans in Vietnam. You also ended up noticing a quiet bearded American called Bill something, who would periodically stand up and oppose the war, while defending his country's better angels. My memory, which may be faulty, is that, on at least one occasion, I heard them speak at the same meeting.

Hitchens has latterly claimed that they probably slept with at least one of the same people - who subsequently became a famous lesbian and feminist activist.

The problem with this is that the most likely candidates - Oxford in the late 60s was not exactly awash with such women - either never slept with one, or never slept with the other, or never slept with either.

One woman, who shared an apartment, and a girlfriend, with Clinton, claims to remember vaguely once necking with Hitchens when she was drunk.

What is the case is that they were having sexual adventures in roughly the same quarter of the forest, with the exception that Clinton was only sleeping with women.


Kaveney's had quite a life and, as she notes, "I somehow seem to know almost everyone." You might want to read the entire entry and then, perhaps, a bit more of her journal.

Found first via Kathryn Cramer.

Posted by Vanderleun at July 13, 2003 6:24 PM
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