Thursday, July 19, 2001
(London -- Seaford)

HEAVY Traffic as our Budget rental truck heads south all afternoon; at Reigate the owner of [...] bookshop is out for the day; same at East Grinstead bookshop, but two students are at a nearby table in their tea-shop, and one comes over having pricked up her ears to hear I am in the store.

"Are you connected with the Deborah Lipstadt case? We have just had three hours of lectures on that at university." The Holocaust Industry! It never lets up. I give her a book, Churchill's War, vol. ii; she says she does not think her sister ought to see it, she is a student under Dr David Cesarani (right), head of the history department at Southampton University. "We call him Dr Ratface Cesarani," I volunteer, and we spend a good hour talking about history and differing viewpoints, before we drive on.

[...] Watch TV in the evening with J.: the Jeffrey Archer case; not very edifying, the way the cowardly British press kicks him, and fiercely, when he is down. The journaille has never changed.

Friday, July 20, 2001
(Seaford -- Reigate -- London)

WE leave Seaford at 9:30 a.m. and drive over to [one of Britain's biggest book distributors] who take several hundred copies of Churchill’s War, vol. ii. I sign one for their unloader too. Good start to the day. Then we retrace our route back to Reigate and London.

There is nothing about the outcome of the Lipstadt appeal on the Classic FM news bulletins that we are listening to. The court has convened in London at 10:30 a.m. to announce its ruling. Around midday I phone B., and she knows only that I have evidently lost the appeal, as she has been having blank telephone calls, cackling laughter, and hate-calls that tell her as much; she knows no more detail. I try phoning [my counsel] once or twice, but get no reply. Still nothing on Classic FM news.

Lost, after a five-year battle: but not lost the war. Sombre drive for an hour, but a later call to B. brings word that [another of Britain's biggest book distributors] have just telephoned headquarters, they are also taking 200 Churchill's War, vol. ii, and have praised the book in the highest terms, which perks me up.

Coffee at East Grinstead; the bookshop owner is there today, and he has a long chat with us about book trade developments. At Reigate, the little [...] bookshop takes six. We drive on back through London's dreadful southern suburbs. In Fulham, [...] Books takes five, and I donate a sixth; I get an £80 parking ticket in those three minutes, as J. looks on passively at the traffic warden and makes no move to shift our truck (later he admits he could not get it into reverse). Aaargh.

Back at Duke Street in the evening there is no word of the detail of the judgment, and I cannot raise either lawyers or counsel to learn more.

BBC Radio Four's "Today" programme has phoned in my absence: will I do a programme tomorrow morning, over at the White City? By which they mean seven a.m. When I say yes, they later change it to 5:30 a.m. -- a pre-recording, to enable them to protect themselves legally. A car will come for me.

The lost battle has given an uplift to all the louts. E-mail hatred pours in to the mailboxes, much of it obscene, Messrs. G S Redish, Joel Rosenberg, and all the other Jewish gentleman; I zap their messages as usual, unread. Typical is a message from one Tim Ash up in the Shetland Isles:

Subject: Victory For Academic Freedom
I am very pleased to hear that your appeal hearing was unsuccessful. This represents a major victory of academic freedom over a traditional enemy of the truth. No reputable historian should resort to the courts to silence their critics. Tim Ash, Kildrummy Technologies Ltd http://www.kildrummy.com.

That goes on to our website with this answer:

I agree. Lipstadt however chose to stay silent, I did not oblige her to. She took the Fifth, as they say in the USA -- the traditional out-route of the crook (vide Jeffrey Archer). As for silencing their critics: was it not Lipstadt who pressured St. Martins Press not to publish my book Goebbels. Mastermind of the Third Reich, on which I had laboured for eight years; and was it not Prof. Peter Pulzer, professor of politics at Oxford, who pressured Macmillan UK Ltd into violating all their remaining contracts with me (in return for the promise of more academic authors from Oxford); which gentle pressure so petrified my editor in chief at Macmillan, Roland Philips (husband of managing director Felicity Rubinstein), that he on that same day, July 6, 1992, directed that all my remaining books be secretly destroyed, without -- as he ordered -- anything of this leaking out to the press or public, let alone to me. Who is silencing whom, I ask?

At 8:17 p.m. the phone rings, and there is just crazed, psychotic, cackling laughter. The caller has withheld his number, but the telephone company now has certain instructions from me which will ensure that this harassment soon stops.

9:35-46 p.m. the BBC phones, they will now pick me up at five a.m. for the programme. We go over points, and I volunteer that I need not mention Prof. Evans (right) by name as the perjurer.

This email to [our printers]: "Thank you for the update; the books are selling well. I was impressed by the shipping arrangements that your packaging department makes, when I inspected the pallets at [the warehouse]. Well done. "

More phone messages. [...] Cahal Milmo from The Independent, wants my comments on the ruling; I give him some. The vultures all ask how I intend to pay. I say. "That's my business, I do not discuss my finances with the media." I will never reveal any names, whatever the penalty.

The Sunday Times (Jack Grimston) telephones and we speak at length about a story he is following up that Field Marshal Rommel had an illegitimate son, whose own son is living in Germany, named Pan; I confirm that this is true, I was contacted by a Linda Siegrist, Rommel's granddaughter, living in New Jersey, with the same facts in January, but I decided not to make use of them. Ironic, the way that the press beats me up with one hand, and holds out the other asking for expert assistance when they need it.

Saturday, July 21, 2001
(London)

PAPERWORK until one a.m., then I sleep until four, awaiting the call from the BBC driver. No call comes, until around 6:15 p.m. when they phone with apologies; the driver has let them down. Aaargh. They ask if they can do the interview by phone, and I do so with John Humphrys as interviewer around seven a.m. It goes well; my mind is a blank afterwards about what I have said, but M. who phones me around 9 a.m. about what he has heard on the radio says the BBC have cut out all reference to Churchill's War and to the witness whom we intend to see prosecuted for perjury, and other more minor matters. No doubt space considerations prevailed.

Today's papers run modest items about the appeal outcome, and I at last learn the outline of what was ruled in the Court of Appeal yesterday. The Times has found that I printed Churchill's War, vol. ii in Singapore, to avoid pressure on the printers coming from my "freedom-loving" opponents. The Guardian ("Deathwish News") excels itself, reporting as follows, quoting (it said) my counsel Adrian Davies as to why I was not in Court:

"Mr Irving was 'somewhere in a van on the south coast' trying to sell his latest book, Churchill's War, to book-shops, said his lawyers.

"After Mr Justice Gray's devastating judgment that he was an apologist for Hitler, Mr Irving has been unable to find a mainstream distributor for the book, which he has published under his own imprint, Focal Point Press, with finance from American investors."

Of course, this merely repeats the Gitta Sereny (above right) libel, for which Guardian Newspapers Ltd will shortly be facing the music. Most wisely in my view, I have never attempted or intended to offer Churchill's War, vol. ii to any publisher other than Focal Point: we generate a far better product than the others (compare Macmillan's Göring with Focal Point's Goebbels and Nuremberg, the Last Battle). Moreover, at the very moment that the appeal court was sitting, my assistant and I were unloading hundreds of copies of the Churchill book that have been ordered by one of the U.K.'s biggest mainstream book distributors.

This Guardian kind of reporting is reminiscent of Der Spiegel, which claimed that Norman Finkelstein's book, The Holocaust Industry, was a dismal flop in the German bookstores; only to have to admit in a later issue that it was top of the best-seller list, and remained there for fifteen weeks or more.

It all reminds me too of the late lamented (but very gifted) Jewish Chronicle writer Chaim Bermant (left) who wrote in August 1992 in The Observer, after interviewing me, that he had found my apartment filled with "packages of hundreds, if not thousands, of unsold copies of Hitler's War."

The innuendo of course was not unsold, but unsaleable: But we can visit any branch of Waterstones or Barnes & Noble and find ourselves surrounded by thousands of copies of "unsold" books. That is what the bookselling business is about: selling unsold books.

The Hitler biography concerned has been sold out, out of print, for over five years -- we printed far too few. It comes back into print in four weeks' time, also -- as The Times will no doubt find out -- in the Far East.

SOMEBODY sends me a page from a University of Cambridge magazine. It seems that The Skunk (Prof. Richard Evans, as he is known to The Jewish Chronicle, courtroom lawyers, the Holocaust Loot commission, and other employers) is lecturing at Cambridge on the weekend of September 21--23 on the topic "Should historical issues be settled in court?" I do hope that lots of my friends attend and inquire about the moneys he received (indeed, a small fortune) for expressing his neutral and objective views on such issues. They can phone the university office concerned at 01223 339 268, or email them at [email protected]; or peek at the website.

I note that the version of today's story posted on the Daily Telegraph website has, as usual, all the enemy weblinks but no link to my own website, which alone has the complete trial and appeal records.

An email comes to us today from a Dr Jörg Goebbels in Austria: "I have read David Irving's Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich and found it great! Exceptional! It's great that he's researched so much on my great uncle! .[...]"

Long call from Mr Sadeh who's writing an article for the Israeli Ha'aretz: he phoned yesterday too.

Drive over to Foyles with a vanload of books. On the way back, two strangers, a pedestrian and his wife crossing Shaftesbury Avenue, spot me through the van window, smile broadly, and shout, "Good luck with the appeal!" Ah, the English. Nice friendly folks -- so different from the newspapers; but a bit behind events, I fear.

An e-mail comes from R.: "I am very angry with the result of your appeal to the higher court. I cannot begin to describe the torrent of disgust and outrage I feel over the injustice done to your reputation and profession.

You are the finest historian I have ever read! My studies of history begin with the first time I picked up your book The Trail of the Fox.

I'm putting a check in the mail for your legal battle this week! These may be trying times, but, you will prevail! We are with you!"

I reply: "Thank you so much for your kind support; we are fighting on still, but on slightly different fronts -- and we shall try to get a criminal conviction of one of the witnesses for perjury."

8:10--36 pm a long call from [counsel]. [...] How very interesting the whole thing is. Good thing I have strong nerves.

Related items on this website:

Lipstadt action index

Grounds for the appeal

Rommel letters reveal secret second family