The word machine

The FT's Gideon Rachman has a neat story to tell about his old friend, Christopher Hitchens:

Hitchens was my boss (or possibly just colleague, he’s not a very managerial type) in Washington in the early 1990s. We were both working for a now defunct British newspaper called The Sunday Correspondent – nicknamed “The Despondent” because of its irreversible downward spiral. I can still remember our first lunch. I would like to say that this is because of the sparkling nature of the conversation. In fact, it is because of the frightening amount that we drank. I staggered home afterwards and fell asleep for a few hours. At 5pm I got up and called Hitchens to discover that he had gone home and written a 2,000 word essay on WH Auden.

Rachman is also quite sharp on the subject of Hitchens' Balliol-style debating technique. Although  I'm somewhat surprised to discover that, in DC,  the great gadfly used to play host to David Irving: "“Irving came round here a couple of times, but I had to drop our social contacts after he made a shocking anti-semitic remark."

What, that nice Mr Irving?