The
Bookseller Nicholas Clee on the
latest news from the world of
publishing
RICHARD
J Evans's Telling Lies About
Hitler, out from Verso next week,
may be unique: a book for which
Andrew "The Jackal" Wylie has
negotiated no advance. The deal between
the small left
wing publisher and the powerful
literary agent follows a complicated
series of publishing manoeuvres.
Evans
was the chief defence witness in
the libel action brought by David
Irving against Penguin and
Deborah Lipstadt, author of
Denying the Holocaust. His
painstaking research discredited
Irving, whom Mr Justice Gray,
finding for the defence, branded as
someone who "persistently and
deliberately misrepresented and
manipulated historical evidence", and
who displayed "all the characteristics
of a Holocaust denier". 
The
judgment,
one might have thought, would put paid
to Irving's ability to wield any
influence at all. But, as Walter
Brennan asked, "Have you ever been
stung by a dead bee?"
William Heinemann commissioned
Telling Lies About Hitler, but
dropped it, citing legal reasons. In
the Observer last Sunday,
Nick Cohen attacked
Heinemann, as well as other
publishers that later declined the
book, for their "gutlessness".
Cohen was unfair about Granta's
position: the publisher was preparing
to bring out Telling Lies About
Hitler, and
had increased its
libel insurance, when it fell
out with Evans and Wylie over
contractual arrangements. Nevertheless,
some companies were clearly afraid of a
discredited figure.
Irving
has intimidated booksellers too. He had
threatened them when they put
Denying the Holocaust on sale,
and he wrote to potential distributors
of the US edition of Telling Lies
About Hitler alleging that the book
was defamatory. Some wrote back to
assure him that they would not stock
it.
The intimidation of booksellers by
the likes of Irving -- Robert
Maxwell and Neil and
Christine Hamilton are among the
others who have tried it -- may be
coming to an end. The Law Commission is
supporting a proposal that the
defamation act be amended so that
plaintiffs may not sue retailers
without also suing the author or the
publisher of the book concerned.
David Irving
comments: IT BEGINS to look as though
a certain professor is just
itching to get somebody to
take a swing at him in The
Strand. Look at that
interesting line about the
Granta firm having "increased
its libel insurance", in
anticipation of publishing the
Evans book; what does that
tell us about what even Granta
thought about its content?
What effect
might it have on a jury, to
hear that publisher after
publisher has clearly
recognized that the proposed
book is libellous, and that
they are going into all these
contortions to find some way
of thwarting the Defamation
Act.
The reason
that plaintiffs (or
"claimants" as they are now
more properly called) used to
sue distributors as well as
authors was that distributors
had the money to meet the
costs, whereas authors often
did not; and publishers were
sometimes straw companies with
no assets (the publisher of
the smear-sheet Searchlight
is an example). We happen to
know that Professor Evans
recently came
into some money, so the
former condition does not
obtain.  |
Nicholas Clee is editor
of The Bookseller. Readers of
the Guardian can subscribe to it
for £13.35 per month and receive
the next eight issues free at My
Subscriptions
IT
BEGINS to look as though a
certain professor is just
itching to get somebody to
take a swing at him in The
Strand 
--
David Irving, commenting on
this article from The
Bookseller
Table:
write to David
Irving