Christopher Hitchens, journalist and public commentator is shown June 7, 2010 in New York, before his cancer diagnosis. (Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)

Christopher Hitchens, one of the most incisive voices of the last three decades, is marking the end of his ability to speak in a moving article for Vanity Fair. Hitchens is known for his incisive criticism - of Mother Teresa, of former president Bill Clinton and of God, as one of the world's most outspoken atheists. But his oesophageal cancer , which he announced in an earlier article in Vanity Fair, has advanced to the point where his voice is failing him. Hitchens was forced to cancel a scheduled appearance at the American Atheist Convention in April, then found himself on a New York street corner unable to hail a cab.

British-born, U.S.-based Hitchens has made a name for himself for cutting through cant and rejecting wooly thinking and is famous for enduring waterboarding in the debate over whether it is torture. A professional polemicist, he admits he loves to talk - on TV, on radio, in public debates - and he reflects on the pleasures of public speaking. "And timing is everything: the exquisite moment when one can break in and cap a story, or turn a line for a laugh, or ridicule an opponent. I lived for moments like that," he writes in Vanity Fair.

Hitchens is open about what he terms "the spectre of the eternal Footman." But comforting thoughts of the afterlife are not an option for the author of God is not Great. Instead, he turns to the bard of Montreal, Leonard Cohen, for a taste of what it means to lose a voice, quoting from the singer's If It Be Your Will.

-- by Susan Noakes