Christopher Hitchens
The late Christopher Hitchens who died yesterday was an avid supporter of a United Ireland.

Rare for British writers, Hitchens was a committed Republican, in favor of ending the monarchy in Britain.

He became embroiled in many arguments on Northern Ireland which he often compared to Cyprus, and stated that partition in both cases was the root of all the problems that the country experienced.

Ironically he often clashed with his brother, Peter, an unabashed royalist and Christian conservative, and a columnist with the Daily Mail who took a very dim view of Irish nationalism.

Peter Hitchens once pursued Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams across the United States asking him hostile questions at every opportunity,

Hitchens views on partition were informed by his first wife, Eleni Meleagrou, a Greek Cypriot, he married in 1981.