Peter Jonathan Hitchens (born 28 October 1951) is a prominent British conservative author, journalist, commentator, and broadcaster, best known for his regular columns in The Mail on Sunday. He has had a distinguished career as a foreign correspondent, reporting from Moscow during the final years of the Soviet Union and from Washington, D.C., covering American politics. Hitchens has contributed articles to a wide array of publications, including The Spectator, The American Conservative, The Guardian, First Things, Prospect, The Critic, and the New Statesman. As the younger brother of the late Christopher Hitchens, a renowned atheist and polemicist, Peter has often been contrasted with his sibling due to their opposing views on religion, politics, and ideology; while Christopher was a staunch leftist and atheist, Peter underwent a political and religious transformation in the 1990s, embracing conservatism and Christianity.

Hitchens began his journalistic career in the 1970s with left-leaning sympathies, working for outlets like the Morning Star, but by the 1990s, he had shifted dramatically to the right, criticizing what he sees as the erosion of British traditions, the excesses of liberalism, and the failures of atheism. His books, such as 'The Abolition of Britain' (1999), which laments cultural changes in the UK, 'The Broken Compass' (2009) on law and order, and 'The Rage Against God' (2010), a response to his brother's atheism, have solidified his reputation as a provocative thinker. He is also a critic of the war on drugs, advocating for its reform, and has expressed opposition to military interventions abroad, including the Iraq War. Hitchens frequently appears on broadcast media, debating topics from politics to religion.

In his personal life, Hitchens was born to a Royal Navy family, which led to a peripatetic childhood. He is married to Eve Hitchens, and the couple has three children. A former Trotskyist, his conversion to Anglican Christianity in 1996 profoundly shaped his worldview, leading him to defend traditional values against secularism. Hitchens resides in Oxfordshire and continues to write and comment on current affairs, maintaining a contrarian stance in British media.