Christopher Hitchens has passed away at the age of 62.

The journalist and author's death was confirmed by Vanity Fair, where he had been a contributing editor for 19 years.

Hitchens died in the company of his friends at the MD Anderson Cancer Centre in Houston, Texas on Thursday night (December 15). He passed away as a result of pneumonia, a complication of oesophagal cancer.

He was diagnosed last year, shortly after the publication of his autobiography Hitch-22.

"At the end, Hitchens was more engaged, relentless, hilarious, observant, and intelligent than just about everyone else - just as he had been for the last four decades... May his 62 years of living, well, so livingly console the many of us who will miss him dearly," the magazine's tribute read.

Born in Portsmouth in April 1949, Hitchens studied at Balliol College, Oxford, reading politics, philosophy and economics.

He worked for The Times higher education supplement and The New Statesman during his early career, and it was at the latter that he first rose to prominence as a controversial and colourful commentator.

Hitchens emigrated to the US in 1981, writing for The Nation for over twenty years. He joined Vanity Fair in 1992 and also wrote for publications including Slate magazine and literary journal The Atlantic on a regular basis. His work took him to over 60 countries.

He is survived by his wife Carol Blue, his younger brother Peter Hitchens, a Mail on Sunday columnist, and three children - Alexander and Sophia from his first marriage to Eleni Meleagrou, and Antonia from his marriage to Blue.

R.I.P.