As Christopher Hitchens' Australian publisher, my dealings with him have been at long, trans-continental range - with one notable exception.
Christopher had been invited, most appropriately, to the Festival of Dangerous Ideas in 2009. He agreed to come principally because it was to be held in the Sydney Opera House, for which he had devious plans.
With only three days, his time was limited, but we promised we'd try to have lunch. At 10.30am on the day before the festival, the phone rang. "Patrick, I've arrived. Can we do lunch today?"
"Er, ye-es, Christopher. I do have a 2.30 meeting ..."
"Well, we'd better go NOW."
Taking my colleagues Sue and Renee as support troops, we adjourned at a decadently early hour to La Grillade. "A drink, Christopher?" (Never Chris by the way.)
"Black Label, please."
Waiter arrives, CH looks askance.
Hastily I corrected, "A double."
"Another?"
"Sure."
"A Coonawarra shiraz with your steak?" Silly question. The three of us provided some small quaffing support but another bottle was, of course, necessary.
The surprise, however, was not CH's legendary thirst, nor the vast range of his learning and his opinions, but his engagement, his courtesy, his interest in his fellow diners' views on literature, on politics, on the world and on Australia. Rhyming book titles and ditties on philosophers were interspersed with pointed, provocative and opinionated commentary. We left with our shiraz-numbed minds reeling, while Christopher returned to his hotel and no doubt to his mini bar, only to emerge a few hours later on our television screens in lucid and devastating form as he dominated the Q&A debate.
At the weekend, the Opera House was filled to overflowing to hear Christopher discuss not just God, or his absence, but any other topic Tony Jones could throw at him. And he achieved his ambition, bursting into song in the Opera House with a hilarious ditty about the great philosophers, with most of whose work I'd wager he was closely familiar.
When the news of his cancer came, he not only greeted it with equanimity and courage, he tackled it through his strongest weapon...his words. Few have written so movingly, so bravely and with such self-awareness about coming to terms with impending death. The announcement of a 'Pray for Christopher Hitchens Day' must have caused him more than a wry smile. "Don't bother unless it makes you feel better," he said. There could be few less likely deathbed conversions.
Nor would many authors title their last work Mortality. Christopher has - he would.

Patrick Gallagher is Chairman of publishers Allen & Unwin