Hitchens’ “British Teeth”

Christopher Hitchens’ “On the Limits of Self-Improvement,” published in Vanity Fair, is accompanied by a series of great photographs — see the series here and here.

I am a proud child of the National Health Service in England and remember feeling rather hurt when, while reading Gore Vidal’s novel The Judgment of Paris many years ago, I came upon a character who was described as having “British teeth.” As Dr. Lituchy readied me with a series of numbing injections, his partner came by to have a look. He wanted to see with his own eyes, he said, that my teeth really were as “British” as they looked in the “before” photograph. I duly beamed for him, and he reeled back briefly.