Hobsbawm, the mighty relic of the Communist left, commands respect in a bruising debate at Hay-on-Wye

The most keenly awaited event of the Hay-on-Wye literary festival approached yesterday, and the rumblings were felt for miles around. Eric Hobsbawm, the last relic of the pro-Soviet Union Communist left, was to be pitted against Christopher Hitchens, who has enraged the left in the past year with his support for George Bush's foreign policy.

Both have had a strange year. Hobsbawm has published his autobiography, Interesting Times, which showed him to beunrepentant for his support for the Soviet Union. He wrote in the book that he would have spied for Joseph Stalin if only somebody had bothered to ask.

Hitchens, by contrast, has been campaigning for a relentless war on terror, lecturing at the White House and agitating for Henry Kissinger to be tried for crimes against humanity.

The debate, playing to a full house, began in a surprisingly affectionate key. Round one: Hitchens reminisced about his days as an Oxford student, when he would read Hobsbawm's work for "evidence of deviations from my Trotskyite line".

He went on: "Pleasingly, there were few, and I learnt all I needed to know about historical materialism in the process. The fact that we now periodise history, not by the reigns of kings or queens but by eras and epochs is in large parts thanks to Eric.''

Hobsbawm nodded at the compliment; clearly this verbal boxing match was not proceeding as he had expected. As Hitchens' polite questions began, Hobsbawm seemed almost irked. His replies were peppered with small gibes at Hitchens. As he explained his distaste for empire - "in any form'' - he felt obliged to say, "but I know that [view] is not popular in this company.''

He even managed a jab at Hitchens from the right, complaining that the modernisation of the Labour Party was necessitated by "your infiltrationist friends''.

Round two: Enter Stalin. Hitchens asked - with the same lethal deference - if at any time Hobsbawm feared that he had tied his life's wagon to the wrong cause in the 1920s when he became a Communist. Hobsbawm, unperturbed, compared the battle between the Western and Eastern blocs in the Cold War to the religious wars of the 17th century and said he hoped that soon, "we will view the 20th century in the way we now view the 17th century". He hoped that we had moved beyond being forced to choose between two Juggernauts. Yet he was insistent that he had made no mistakes. He was asked, if he could revisit his 1930s self, if he would tell little Eric that spying for Stalin was a bad idea. He said simply: "No.'' Indeed he would recommend it as "the only way to defeat Hitler''.

Anyway, "a second Cold War'' was now beginning - he gestured to Hitchens - and "we are again being told to pick sides between good and evil''. This, he explained, was not the 21st century he wanted to see.

Round three: Enter the people. An audience member asked Hobsbawm for his views on democracy. The historian's face puckered; the kind of society Hobsbawm preferred, he replied, "without special privileges for any groups'', was unlikely to be produced by democracy. Hitchens told Hobsbawm he would have made "a very good conservative don''. "Ah'', he replied, "But I was never liberal.'' The spirit of venomous attack that Hitchens is famous for seemed to flash into his eyes but he was still too respectful to land a knockout blow in favour of the revolutionary liberal democracy to which he is now committed.

Hitchens seemed grudgingly to respect the old man's honesty. Even when Hobsbawm attacked the Iraq war, which Hitchens has tirelessly defended, he limited himself to saying that his opponent "subscribes to the same reactionary analysis of this war as Henry Kissinger''. Then, alas, the metaphorical bell rang - on this debate and maybe, since Hobsbawm is part of the last generation of defenders of the Soviet Union, on the debates at the heart of the 20th century.