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Sunday, September 07, 2003

Tom Friedman Award: "[Iraq's] borders were drawn in 1920 with advice from that romantic lady explorer Gertrude Bell, and many of its greatest sites were carefully classified by Sir Max Mallowan, husband of Agatha Christie. (With this pair of seasoned eccentrics I once took a highly bizarre punting trip in Oxford.)"
--Christoper Hitchens, Vanity Fair, October 2003

We love the Hitch as much as the next girl but this is the sort of gratuitous remark that would get him thrown out of the tailor shop bar, and provides The Greatest Writer of Our Times with so much of his material.

P.S. Isn't it also less than clear to whom "this pair" refers? Christie and husband Mallowan? Mallowan and Bell?