One likes to be prepared when talking to Christopher Hitchens; he is, after all, one of the sharpest wits in fact or fiction, at least in Washington DC. So it was with a sinking feeling that I realised, just as my train was pulling out of New York's Penn Station en route to this nation's bosky capital, that I had left my diligently assembled list of questions concerning his new book, Blood, Class and Nostalgia (Chatto & Windus 398 pp £18.00), lying on the bed back at my apartment.

On arriving in Washington, I found that the hotel where I had a reservation was the site for a convention of gay deaf people, which made for lots of strange noises and giggling in the hallways. After a night of this I decided to take Hitchens up on his kind