18 months after being diag­nosed with oesophageal can­cer, the polem­i­cal writer Christo­pher Hitchens has died at the age of 62. His fans began to fear the worst last month when Hitchens, sud­den­ly hos­pi­tal­ized with pneu­mo­nia, could­n’t attend a wide­ly-pub­li­cized debate in Lon­don. The pro­mot­ers of the event, Intel­li­gence², quick­ly turned the debate into a cel­e­bra­tion of Hitchens’ life. Stephen Fry played host, and Richard Dawkins, Christo­pher Buck­ley, Salman Rushdie, Lewis Lapham, Mar­tin Amis, James Fen­ton and Sean Penn all paid trib­ute. Above, we’re high­light­ing the poignant video once again.

Also fit­ting­ly, we’re bring­ing back anoth­er clip that fea­tures Hitchens dis­cussing how his strug­gle with can­cer affect­ed his views on the ques­tion of an after­life. “I would say it frac­tion­al­ly increas­es my con­tempt for the false con­so­la­tion ele­ment of reli­gion and my dis­like for the dic­ta­to­r­i­al and total­i­tar­i­an part of it,” he respond­ed. “It’s con­sid­ered per­fect­ly nor­mal in this soci­ety to approach dying peo­ple who you don’t know but who are unbe­liev­ers and say, ‘Now are you gonna change your mind?’ That is con­sid­ered almost a polite ques­tion.” Dur­ing the event taped last Feb­ru­ary (watch the full pro­gram here), Hitchens made his views pret­ty clear: No deathbed con­ver­sion for me, thanks, but it was good of you to ask.

And final­ly we cap things off with a mon­tage of 22 com­ments from Christo­pher Hitchens. When you add them all up, you get some vin­tage Hitchens — every­thing that made him some­times loved, some­times hat­ed but always respect­ed.

If you have nev­er spent time read­ing Hitch, we’re going to rec­om­mend his last piece for Van­i­ty Fair — his reflec­tion on Niet­zsche’s famous line “What­ev­er doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” It was pub­lished last week, and it’s quite the coda.