Really! They were very popular here in scandinavia and in the household I grew up in, and amongs my friends. I have an estranged brother that I very much looked up to growing up, and he had some books of hitchens at least, think some dawkins too, but that was perhaps later. I could swear that he was on some talkshows here being interviewed too, the friday show everybody had to watch, like your letterman. This was the late 90s and early 2000. I think Hitchens may have lived in the UK in the early 90s. British culture streams over to us, more so than american.
And we are mostly atheists, and have statechurch, so many atheists do not like that. Because it is taxfunded. And want ownership over the scripture, because of co-ownership, even if they do not believe. So, bit different than the US with private churches. Yes, another thing, now I remember that some very leftleaning newspaper had a satarday magazine that featured articles of Hitchens. They bought the vanity fair articles and others. As a paper I just looked at, had an article of Paul Krugman or something like that.
