Perseus Academic: Blood, Class and Empire by Christopher Hitchens

The special relationship between the US and Britain has never been stronger. The Bush-Blair alliance and Operation Iraqi Freedom is the most obvious example, but even on trivial terrain—the new Mini Cooper, the growing audience for BBC news, the abiding interest in Churchilliana and the royal family—the signs of its endurance are overwhelming.

America's relationship with Britain is usually presented as a matter of tradition, manners, and common culture, sanctified by wartime alliance. But as Christopher Hitchens notes, the special ingredient is empire, transmitted from an ancient regime that has tried to preserve and renew itself thereby. The cultural counterpart to this, he argues, has been a hypocritical attempt by England to play Greece to the American Rome.

Christopher Hitchens is a widely published polemicist and frequent radio and TV commentator. He is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and a visiting professor of liberal studies at the New School in New York.

Christopher Hitchens is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair. His numerous books include Letters to a Young Contrarian and Why Orwell Matters.