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I once used to attend a drinking club in Washington called the Osric Dining Society, set up in 1986 by my friend Christopher Hitchens, which awarded an annual prize to the journalist who produced “the most toadying, fawning piece of writing” that had sucked up to the US administration during the previous year. The society was named after Osric, the obsequious courtier in Hamlet who automatically flatters all in authority.

Attendees at the dinner, which was presided over by Christopher and took place in a restaurant on Connecticut Avenue, had to submit an article by another journalist that “must follow, as nea

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