(10.30 a.m.)

MR IRVING: May it please the court. Two or three minor housekeeping matters.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

MR IRVING: Your Lordship requested yesterday or the day before yesterday, you expressed an interest in that remark by Hans Frank at the Nuremberg trial where he said that he had discussed it with the Führer on February 2nd 1944. Your Lordship said you would like to see the passage concerned. That is the top document in the heap which I have left your Lordship there.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you.

MR IRVING: In order that your Lordship can see the passage concerned, I have put it into bold face, and it is about 10 pages in, I think. It is easier to find -- it is three pages from the end, my Lord.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, thank you.

MR RAMPTON: Maybe your Lordship has something I have not.

MR IRVING: It is there.

MR RAMPTON: Thank you very much.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is in bold.

MR IRVING: I have put in bold, that particular passage. The entire document is of interest and it may well be that Mr Rampton will wish to ask questions about it. It is Hans Frank, who is the Governor General, which is not

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where Auschwitz was situated, of course, the Governor General, but he is relating his own experiences and how he learned, first of all, of the rumours from radio broadcasts, which may seem extraordinary and how he then went to discuss them with Hitler.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, thank you.

MR IRVING: The second point is ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Sorry to interrupt you, but where shall we put this?

MR IRVING: Miss Rogers will, undoubtedly, have a suggestion to make of a proper nature.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. She is in charge.

MR RAMPTON: Probably in the J file somewhere or other. At the back of tab 7 of L1IV for the present.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Hang on, this is, in effect, an Auschwitz document.

MR IRVING: It is.

MR RAMPTON: Is it?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: So we do not want to put it in a ----

MR RAMPTON: I do not think it is an Auschwitz document.

MR IRVING: It is. It goes to Auschwitz and Hitler's knowledge of Auschwitz. It is actually the question of the final link. Your Lordship may read this document either way, of course. You may hold it against me, in fact, that Frank is discussing this with Hitler.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not going to try to absorb it now

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because it maybe you will want to pick this up with Professor Evans.

MR RAMPTON: It is Hitler knowledge, really, because it reflects back on the suggestion that Frank was told by Hitler ----

MR IRVING: I agree.

MR RAMPTON: --- or one of Hitler's people on 12th December 1941.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: So you stick with L as being the appropriate place?

MR RAMPTON: Yes, I would stick with L for the moment. L1, tab 8, I am now told.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of 8, you are saying?

MR RAMPTON: If there is a tab 8.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I know we are taking time on this, but it is really important that one has the documents in some sort of order. Yes, Mr Irving. Next one?

MR IRVING: The next point is that yesterday evening at about 8.30 p.m. there was delivered to me by courier from the Defendants a very large bundle of papers once again for which Mr Rampton would say, I attach no blame whatsoever to the other parties; obviously, this is an action where that kind of thing happens.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I am not so sure about that, but I will guard my tongue at the moment.

MR IRVING: Basically, it was answers to questions which I

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had asked of today's witness, Professor Evans, on January 2nd and January 3rd this year, around about that date, and here we are five weeks later; they have now delivered a response of probably 150, something like that, pages.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Sorry. You say you asked questions of Professor Evans on a previous occasion?

MR RAMPTON: Written questions.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think I have seen that.

MR RAMPTON: It is perfectly all right within the rules.

MR IRVING: Within the rules and with the aim of speeding things up.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think I have seen the product of your questions.

MR IRVING: Well, the product was delivered to me last night. It covers really the first 200 pages of his expert report which means I cannot today address myself specifically to those pages of his report. It would be a nonsense.

MR RAMPTON: That is perfectly reasonable. In fact, the answers run only to six pages, I think.

MR IRVING: Yes.

MR RAMPTON: The rest is what you might call supporting documentation.

MR IRVING: Very well.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: But why has this come ----

MR RAMPTON: Because Professor ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: --- within hours of Professor Evans getting

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into the witness box.

MR RAMPTON: Because Professor Evans is a busy man and he has only just answered them. I cannot answer them for him.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, that, of course, I understand.

MR IRVING: I make no criticism of that, my Lord. Obviously, we both have our professional lives to lead, but for this reason it would be pointless for me to cross-examine him on those pages as I certainly shall.

MR RAMPTON: That I accept.

MR IRVING: Because he may very well have answered the matters in the meantime. But today I was going to discuss more general matters with him. We were going to set the scene as far as we possibly can.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but may I just say something about your cross-examination? I have spent many hours, to put it no higher, on day 16 and day 17 which is, basically, your cross-examination of Professor Browning.

MR IRVING: Yes.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Your questions, if I may say so, are clear, almost always to the point, but what I would find helpful is if you would usually make a point of, if you can, directing me to the document that you are cross-examining on, or invite the Defendants to direct me to the document you are cross-examining on, because you probably understand when I go through the transcript (and I am much less knowledgeable than you and, indeed, than the

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Defendants), I do not always find it very easy to follow the drift of the questioning unless I know what the document says.

MR IRVING: My Lord, I will certainly do so in the written text of my summing up which I shall deliver to your Lordship as a written document as well as spoken.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: But, remember, I am trying to follow this and digest it as we go along from the transcript so that if you can ----

MR IRVING: Your Lordship will have noticed a disparity ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: --- accommodate?

MR IRVING: --- of effort between the man power on the Defence side and the man power on the Claimants' side of this case, and I do what I can.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I know. I am really inviting the Defendants to come to my assistance during your cross-examination. The trouble is -- I have said it before, I will say it again -- that the documents on certain aspects of this case are scattered amongst different files, mostly untranslated, and it does not make life any easier. I say that with some feeling.

MR RAMPTON: I am not sure if I see that as a rebuke or not. It is a fact of life, however. To make your Lordship's task easier because, after all, at the end of the case your Lordship is going to have a write a judgment, we will perhaps, as it were, in conference in open court with your

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Lordship try to put together -- we have for some subjects already done it, we did it for Reichskristallnacht, we have done it for Dresden and some other things.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: They are fine, those two topics.

MR RAMPTON: But there are, obviously, a number of key documents which your Lordship rightly says and, unsurprisingly, since the bundles have not been agreed in the usual way, but are simply the experts' references, they are scattered all over the place, we need to draw them together. When we have done that, I think we need some help from your Lordship about which ones you would like us to translate.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I agree with all of that, but just looking ahead, for example on Longerich -- it is too late on Professor Evans and it may not be a problem with Evans -- it would be helpful to perhaps, prepare, a little bundle in advance.

MR RAMPTON: I agree, yes.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: It may be you have done all this already, but if you have not, do you think that could be considered?

MR RAMPTON: My working is different. I have taken all the documents already from different experts for use in cross-examination, which is a slightly different exercise.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I will have to leave it to you, but bear in mind I am not rebuking so much as just expressing a real problem.

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MR RAMPTON: I understand it as a plea for help.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: In a way, it is exactly that.

MR RAMPTON: Which I fully understand. So what we will try to do, if we can, is get a Longerich bundle together, but it may well include some documents from other places.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Mr Irving, there are some other documents here. Should I look at those now or are they for later?

MR IRVING: No. I will draw your attention to them when the time comes, but I am going to draw your attention or remind your Lordship of what we call the Kinna document, K-I-N-N-A, which was a late arrival. I am almost tempted to say it is a glamorous arrival. It arrived late from an anonymous source, your Lordship will remember, and your Lordship asked the Defence to take two weeks to find out where it came from. They have know provided that information to me last night. It is a document which I regard as suspect inasmuch as it comes from a 1960's Polish publication, what we would call a blue book and the Germans a white book an the Nazis a brown book, I suppose, or the East Germans. It is that kind of publication. I make no criticism of that. I am not going to attack the integrity of the document because I am not in position to. But they have also produced in support of the document the testimony of the man who signed it, as I understand it

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taken in.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can we first of all go to this document?

MR RAMPTON: Yes, my Lord. It was, I think produced ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I remember it.

MR RAMPTON: -- during the course of -- I am going to hand it up.

MR IRVING: I am not going to deal with the contents of the document. I understand I will be cross-examined on it.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, but if you are saying about it, I want to look at it so I know what you are talking about.

MR RAMPTON: There was a translation at some time. I do not know where that has got to. It is a report from a place called Zamosc which is in Poland of 16th December 1942 about the transport of some 644 Poles to Auschwitz. It has a real significance so far as, indeed, not just Auschwitz, but the Holocaust as a whole, in its second paragraph on page 2, which somebody, might be the source, has put a line beside, and the question was really this for the moment, what authenticity does it have?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I remember.

MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving was worried about that. We now know that it was reprinted as a facsimile in a Polish book in 1960, which is produced by the Warsaw archive which is, no doubt, where it is, also again in 1979 and then the last document where it was translated from German into Polish, and in the last document is the testimony man Kinna

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himself which I think he gave on 2nd July 1964.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is Kinna the signatory of the document?

MR RAMPTON: He is the man who wrote the report, yes. Although I cannot possibly read it, I am your Lordship cannot either, maybe Mr Irving can, these are the handwritten notes of the hearing. What, in effect, we are told they do is to show that Kinna himself verified the contents of his report.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: In what context?

MR RAMPTON: He was a witness at a trial.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: He was a witness as a prosecution of a ----

MR RAMPTON: Yes, so I understood, at Frankfurt. The last document in this little clip is, I think, not connected. It is a letter, I think, from Hans Frank to Heinrich Himmler dated 23rd June 1942.

MR IRVING: It is from Viktor Brach.

MR RAMPTON: You are quite right. It is in the top left-hand corner, but I do not know what it says because I have not read it yet.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right.

MR IRVING: My Lord, can I revert to the submission I was making about the Kinna document?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, absolutely. That is what we are on now.

MR IRVING: I am not going to challenge the integrity of the document because I am not in a position to do so, but I am going to deal with that handwritten document which your

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Lordship was just looking at which was the 1963 trial where Kinna was asked about the document. I have deciphered the handwriting at the end I will translate it very rapidly: "Says the witness Kinna" ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Pause. I have not got there yet.

MR IRVING: It has a number of numbers on it, and it has an upside down page 11 at the top left-hand side corner. The final paragraph, the final two paragraphs, translate as follows: "The witness Kinna confirmed the accuracy of the report. He answered the questions put to him by the lawyer Professor Dr Kaul". K-A-U-L.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am so sorry.

MR RAMPTON: My Lord I am sorry, the clip has not been paginated which is annoying. It is the second of two ----

MR IRVING: Two handwritten pages.

MR RAMPTON: --- handwritten page. It has a fax page 10 in the top right-hand corner.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have it. I cannot see the upside-down 11.

MR RAMPTON: You do not have to struggle with that.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, sorry, Mr Irving?

MR IRVING: I will repeat it. "The witness Kinna confirmed the accuracy of the report". This is two paragraphs from the bottom, "The witness Kinna" ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I see.

MR IRVING: --- "confirmed the accuracy of the report. He answered the questions put to him, the expanding

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questions, the amplifying questions, put to him by the lawyer Professor Dr Kaul. To the correction of the witness, no further motions were put", or it could be either "correction" or on the swearing of the witness, but that is unimportant. What concerns me is the final paragraph: "The witness was sworn in, and in agreement with both parties he was released". I shall draw attention to that. I do not think this is a proper time to draw attention. The significance is the fact that this witness, to what is obviously a criminal document, is questioned only as to the accuracy of the document and is then released by all the parties, including the public prosecutor.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I am not saying you are wrong about that. My reaction to it would be that that is simply what happens when a witness is finished giving his evidence.

MR IRVING: Yes, except that, since your Lordship has put it that way, I would comment on the remarkable fact that here is a man who has obviously been engaged in a criminal undertaking who could possibly have struck a bargain, shall I put it like that, that if he will testify to the accuracy of the document, then no further charges will be laid against him.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: So your position on what we are calling the Kinna report is that, yes, it is an authentic document.

MR IRVING: For the purposes of this trial, my Lord.

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MR JUSTICE GRAY: But you query whether it was not the product of a plea bargain.

MR IRVING: My Lord, I am not challenging the integrity of the document. I cannot because I do not have sufficient apparatus to challenge it. Having read the document, I do not think it seriously damages my position in this case. So, for the purpose of the case, I am going to ask questions on its contents as though it were genuine.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Again I ask where shall we put this?

MR RAMPTON: This is an Auschwitz document. I suggest it goes in tab 4 of K2.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much.

MR RAMPTON: Chronologically, we will have to clip it and sort it out. I suggest it goes as a lump in wherever the date is, 16.12.42. I cannot help on that because I have not got my K2 here.

MR IRVING: The final problem, my Lord ----

MR RAMPTON: Can I just finish? I am sorry, I am not trying to be discourteous. I do have a translation as well of the Kinna document.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much.

MR RAMPTON: There is one for the judge and one for Mr Irving. He ought to see that in case he does not agree with it. (Same handed).

MR IRVING: My Lord the fourth matter concerns the document which you are familiar with, which is August 1st 1941 from

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Müller to the Einsatzgruppen chiefs about which we spent some discussion.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: And about the authenticity of it.

MR IRVING: A serious problem has arisen because I contacted the West German archives, your Lordship will see that the second page of that little bundle I gave you, the bundle beginning with the words "from Monday", the second page of that is headed "translation", does your Lordship have the page?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

MR IRVING: A letter from me on February 7th this year to the German Federal Archives saying, this is a translation: There is a big trial in London. I need an original copy of the following document. I give the reference number which is given by our witnesses in their bundles.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

MR IRVING: I need it immediately. Professor Browning is going to be for the next three days only in the witness box. Could you please fax the documents, we need them in facsimile. I attach importance if possible to seeing the original documents rather than printed versions, as your Lordship appreciates. They replied to me yesterday, saying that document is not in the file. And to clarify any ambiguities as to what that letter meant, I spoke with Dr Lens yesterday of the German Federal Archives in Berlin and he said, yes, that means this document is not in the

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file at all, it is full of completely different documents, which he then describes. There may be an innocent explanation for this but I would ask, before being questioned about this document as I understand the defence wish to, that I should be apprised as to where the original is and, if possible, shown a facsimile.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: We have had evidence about that, but I am afraid it is not in my mind at the moment. I think it is been around for a long time, the Müller document, has it not?

MR RAMPTON: Yes. It is mentioned in a book, at least this I know, by Professor Gerald Fleming, called Hitler und die Endlösung. It is a German book which has also been translated.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, that is right.

MR RAMPTON: It was published in 1982. I have Mr Irving's copy which he kindly gave me.

MR IRVING: Loaned you.

MR RAMPTON: Yes, of course. I have no intention permanently to deprive Mr Irving. The point is this, not what the authenticity of the document might be, but that it is in a book which Mr Irving has, and that is what I shall be cross-examining him about. I am not going back to history.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, but he can rely on this letter.

MR RAMPTON: It does not seem that it is now in a particular

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archive.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, the file where you would expect to find it does not contain it.

MR RAMPTON: The reference may be wrong, I do not know. I will try and track it down. It is a different point. I am not going to cross-examine him about that.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is all of this little clip connected with Müller?

MR IRVING: No, my Lord. The final document in that little clip is actually a press report of 1983 in which Fleming refers to that very document. I include it purely because I found it by accident last night in my files. I would certainly rely on this little episode as being further proof of the negligence of the historians adduced as expert witnesses by the Defence in this case.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do we know where Fleming got the document from?

MR IRVING: No.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is he still ----

MR IRVING: He is still extant.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: -- alive and well?

MR IRVING: Yes. I spoke to him a few days ago. He never wrote about it in a letter to me in his considerable correspondence which I searched.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I will leave this clip on one side.

MR IRVING: We will be coming back to it in the course of the

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cross-examination of Professor Evans, my Lord.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I have some photographs of Wenona Bryan.

MR IRVING: We do not need them until halfway down the cross-examination of Professor Evans when we get the little ditty.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Any more?

MR IRVING: That is my only submission.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much.

MR RAMPTON: Your Lordship again has probably got something I have not. I knew what the first part of this exchange was about, because I know what the document is.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: You have not got any photographs?

MR RAMPTON: I have no photographs.

MR IRVING: Miss Rogers is sitting on everything.

MR RAMPTON: May I enquire through your Lordship where the correspondence is with the Bundesarchiv, or whatever it is?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have a clip which I think you have headed "from Monday August 23rd".

MR RAMPTON: We will sort it out later. I do not want to waste time.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Good. Now shall we have Professor Evans?

MR RAMPTON: Yes. < Professor Evans, sworn. < Examined by Mr Rampton QC.

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Q. Professor Evans, first of all, your full names please?

A. Richard John Evans.

Q. Have you made a report, a long report, for these proceedings?

A. I have.

Q. Have you made some corrections to it?

A. Yes, I have.

Q. More recently, have you answered some questions in writing from Mr Irving?

A. I have, yes.

Q. So far as those documents contain statements of fact, are you as satisfied as you can be that they are accurate?

A. I am, yes.

Q. In so far as they contain expressions of opinion, are you satisfied that those opinions are fair?

A. Yes.

Q. Thank you. Would you remain there to be cross-examined. < Cross-examined by Mr Irving.

Q. Good morning, Professor Evans.

A. Good morning.

Q. My Lord, I intend this morning to try and deal with matters generally, particularly some of the matters that are large in recent public coverage of this case and try and dispose of them, and then go seriatim through particular points which are contained in his expert report. I shall also try to bring in the reports of those

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witnesses who are not going to be cross-examined or presenting themselves for cross-examination and test your Lordship's patience in that respect, and have to use this cross-examination or the cross-examination of Professor Longerich as a vehicle for introducing certain documents?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. We have discussed that already and that is something that you are perfectly entitled to do. But do bear in mind, if I may say it again, that it is important that I can follow it, preferably by reference to the documents.

MR IRVING: By reference to the documents, yes. Professor Evans, first of all, we learned yesterday from Professor Browning, rather to my surprise that he is effectively in the pay of the Yad Vashem Institute, that he received 35,000 dollars from them for a task which he has not completed, so he is in their debt. Can you assure the court that you are not also in some way indebted to the Yad Vashem Institute or to any similar body?

A. It depends rather what you mean by "any similar body". I am certainly not in debt to anybody, as far as I know.

Q. Yes, the significance being of course that Yad Vashem was the body which commissioned the work which is complained of in this action.

A. I have never had any dealings with the Yad Vashem Institute of any description.

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Q. Where would you position yourself in the political spectrum? I think it is important that we know, when you are describing somebody as being an extremist of either left or right, where you position yourself, your own vantage point from which you view them?

A. I am a member of the Labour Party. I do not suppose that means that one is left wing these days.

Q. No. Never mind the Labour Party's politics. What is your own personal political standpoint from which you view people like myself, or Margaret Thatcher, or John Major? Would you regard Margaret Thatcher as being moderately right-wing or extreme right wing?

A. As I said, I am a member of the Labour party and, broadly speaking, I take the Labour Party's point of view on current affairs in so far as I interest myself in them. I would not describe myself as an expert.

Q. Do you allow the Labour Party to dictate your politics to you or do you have any ideas of your own in this respect?

A. It depends what you mean by politics. Of course I make up my own mind about things.

Q. Your writings appear to be left of centre, if I may put it that way. You would not expect David Irving to write a book, for example, about feminism or the women's movement or something like that.

A. Yes, though I have to point out that my work on feminism has been heavily sharply criticised by a number of

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feminists.

Q. Well, maybe feminists are the kind of people who will never be satisfied. Would that be correct?

A. I cannot really comment on that. It depends what kind of feminists you are talking about.

Q. You have written about 15 books have you, about 15 titles so far?

A. 16, I think. Yes.

Q. They have been published widely around the world?

A. They have, yes.

Q. How would you describe yourself? None of your books have been on a best seller list, have they? They are academic works, are they not?

A. They are academic works, though some of are written -- I always try to write for a wider audience. That is to say I always try and write in a readable manner, and some of my books have sold I think quite well for works that are scholarly. My book "In Defence of History", which came out two and a half years ago, has I think sold about 20,000 copies.

Q. You are referring to this book, is that correct?

A. Indeed. That is the American edition. I have no idea what that sold.

Q. It spells "defence" differently.

A. Indeed. That is why they had to reprint it. It is also appearing in Turkish, Japanese, German, Korean and a

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number of other languages. My book "Death in Hamburg" I think sold about 20,000 copies in English and German.

Q. Are you talking about hard book copies or paper back copies?

A. Both.

Q. Altogether?

A. Yes. I should also say that I have one won a literary prize for history and I have recently been elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature so it seems that my books are regarded as being literary in some sense.

Q. It is quite difficult to write literary history, is it not, especially when you are quoting from document? Would you agree?

A. It is difficult. One has maintain a balance between accuracy, which is of course one's first duty, and readability.

Q. If you are translating a document from Chaucer in English, then you would not use the old language, you would use modern English, would you not? You would put it into modern English and this would not be considered in any way distorting the original. Is that right?

A. It depends. There are different versions of Chaucer. I cannot say I am an expert on Chaucer in any shape or form.

Q. Obviously, if I am referring to translating from French or from German, it is sometimes very difficult to get an

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exact shade of sense on a word. Frequently there is no exact comparison between the two words, between the English and the German?

A. This is, well, I think what I would say is that, of course, you cannot do an absolutely literal translation because the word order is different and words have slightly different meanings, but the first duty of an historian is to translate from a foreign language in terms that render faithfully the meaning of the original.

Q. Yes.

A. And I think that any literary pretensions that one has must surely take second place to that aim.

Q. How would you decide what is the faithful rendering of a particular word in translation? Would you look just at that word or would you take into account your own general knowledge of what is going on or would you look at the surrounding countryside, so to speak, of the paragraphs before and after?

A. I think you have to do all of these things and reach your own judgment as to what is an accurate translation.

Q. Yes, but the fact that you have used a word that is not a mirror image from one language to the other of a word in a translation is not necessarily evidence of a distortion or an intent to distort?

A. It depends on how you do it. I mean, as you know, dictionaries give a number of different alternative

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English equivalents for German words and you have to decide which one is the most accurate in the circumstances.

Q. Well, I will be dealing with this probably next week with you when you come back, Professor, but you will accept that, for example, a 1936 dictionary in German will probably give a different meaning of a word from a 1999 dictionary?

A. In some cases, most certainly, in some cases, not, and of course they give range of meanings which one has to use in different circumstances. It may well be, for example, that in 1942 or 1943 in some circumstances a word is used somewhat differently from the way it is used in 1936. So I would not take a 1936 dictionary as being absolute gospel for the usage of words in some circumstances in 1942 to 3. As I said, you have to look, as you said indeed, at the document itself and the surrounding documents, at the meanings, at the time, the people who wrote it.

Q. And take your own expertise into account, is that correct?

A. You have to use your judgment which is based on your reading of other documents, most certainly, yes, and, indeed, other people's of course. Other people will have worked ----

Q. Sometimes the document itself will give you a clue. We looked at a document with Professor Browning, October

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1942, relating to the Umsiedlung of 20,000 Jews from Brest-Litowsk. Just from that sentence, it was not plain what the word "Umsiedlung" meant, but two pages later, as Professor Browning correctly pointed out, the 20,000 are referred as erschossen, shot. So there is no question there, is there?

A. I would not really want to comment on it without actually having the document in front of me.

Q. Later on in the same paragraph we have the sentence that half the inhabitants of the village of X were shot and the after were umgesiedelt to a neighbouring village in which case the word quite clearly has a different meaning, does it not, in the same paragraph?

A. Again I really do not want to comment without having the document in front of me.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Take it from me it is right. We went through it and it is obviously right.

A. I am afraid have not read the transcripts for that particular day.

MR IRVING: So it seems it is possible to have the most glaring inconsistencies even within the same document as to what the meaning of a word is?

A. Words may be used in different senses, yes, and certainly as euphemisms in some senses and not as in others. If you use an euphemism, well, almost by definition, in other circumstances it going to have its actual real meaning.

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Q. So it is a minefield then, the translation of documents, or it is either a minefield or a sweet shop, a candy store, depending on which way you are looking at it. If you want to go into those documents with an evil intent or with a perverse intent, then you can fix a meaning which just fits the meaning you want, is that correct?

A. Well, if you are referring to yourself, yes. I mean, I would not do that.

Q. Well, I am ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: What is sauce for the goose is source for the gander. In a way, I understand why you are asking these questions. I understand the point you are making.

MR IRVING: I am just rubbing it in, my Lord, the fact that, as Professor Evans rightly said, if this applies to myself, I could distort the document one way, but, of course, if it applies to a left wing historian or a Marxist, they could distort exactly the same document the other way, and he was quite right to point this out. (To the witness): We will leave the matter of meanings of words because we cannot do that really at this point without having a little bundle of documents to look at which I shall bring on Tuesday, I think, which will be a bundle of documents about the "Ausrotten", so you might like to prepare yourself intellectually for the word ausrotten and what it means. Professor, you are in charge of this magnificent

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team of stallions who have been preparing the defence, is that correct? You were the leading, the chief expert witness, am I right?

A. No, I some research assistants. I have helped the defence in suggestion as to whom should be called as expert witnesses, but not all the expert the witness have been called at my suggestion. I certainly have not been in charge of them in the sense that I have directed them what to write.

Q. Of course, you would not dictate to them what to write, but have you dictated what field of research they should apply their minds to in connection with this defence?

A. Not dictated, no. I suggested to the defence that certain witnesses might be called to cover certain fields and then, of course, there were lengthy discussions as to how this should be made more precise and exactly what areas should be covered and by whom and so on. Not all of my suggestions were accepted, of course.

MR RAMPTON: Can I just sound a warning note? We are getting towards forbidden territory.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: We are on privilege.

MR IRVING: I certainly would not have asked him privileged questions.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, you are the right side of the boundary, but Mr Rampton was putting down a marker.

MR IRVING: I was going to ask here, did you look specifically

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for left orientated experts or right-wing orientated experts? I mean, you did not ask Professor Faurisson, for example, did you, to give evidence?

A. I would not consider him an expert.

Q. You would not consider him an expert?

A. No, I think he is a charlatan.

Q. You are right; he was stripped of his Professorship, was he not, by the University of Lyons or Lille, one of the two?

A. It is more his work that I am concerned with and I do not think it is reputable work. My only concern in suggesting the names of expert witnesses was that they should be experts in their particular fields.

Q. Yes. So a right winger is a charlatan and a left winger is acceptable. Would that have been your standard?

A. Not at all, no. Had, for example, Professor Hillgruber still been alive, he was a decidedly right-wing historian, but I consider him a reputable expert in certain fields of Second World War.

Q. What about Professor Hans Mommsen? Might he have come up with the wrong answers, perhaps?

A. I really do not want to get into discussions of whom we might have called, and we did not.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I do not think you are actually being asked the question in that way, and I think it is a legitimate question. What is the answer?

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A. What was the question?

MR IRVING: Might you have called Professor Dr Hans Mommsen of the University of Bochum who is an acknowledged expert on this field?

A. But -- in the end, he has not been called.

Q. But you would not have considered calling him?

A. That is such a hypothetical question; I mean, I would have considered calling him. There are many people whom I would have considered calling but we did not in the end consider calling them.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I ask you the question this way which I do not think infringes any privilege. Have you gone out of your way to recommend historians who have a particular point of view which happens to coincide with your own?

A. No.

MR IRVING: But you have had your knives out in the past for right wing historians or Nazi historians, have you not? In your book "In Defence of History" you make minced meat of some historians?

A. I think it is also right to point out that I have very heavily criticised some left wing historians as well. If you take my book "In Defence of History", for example, there is some very sharp criticism of the Marxist historian, David Abraham, there; there is some sharp criticism of the Marxist historian, Christopher Hill. So I do not think I direct my criticisms only at historians

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who might be identified as right-wing.

Q. You have stepped into the shoes of Sir Geoffrey Elton at Cambridge, have you not?

A. No.

Q. Do you not hold the Chair of Modern History at Cambridge?

A. Yes, but he held the Reader's Chair.

Q. Is he still there?

A. He is dead, I am afraid.

Q. Well, he is not still there, is he?

A. No.

Q. How would we position him on the political spectrum?

A. Very difficult. I mean, I think in some ways he was an unconventional character. I did not know him very well, I have to say, but, on the whole, I think you could say he was right-wing.

Q. What is the difference between "unconventional" in your vocabulary and "extremist"?

A. I meant more in terms of his rather unpredictable views on some subjects.

Q. A bit of a loose cannon?

A. Yes, I would say that.

Q. Not politically correct?

A. I think that is a very slippery term. I mean, it depends exactly what you mean by "politically correct". I am not sure that the term political correctness was very much in vogue at the time when he held the chair.

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Q. Let me assure you, I am not trying to lay any traps this morning or, indeed, for the rest of today. We are just generally exploring the terrain. So you do not have to have any sense of reserve in answering the questions I am putting to you because ----

A. Well ----

Q. --- there are no traps.

A. Well, I am not an expert on Sir Geoffrey Elton whom I only knew very slightly and I did not read, by any means, all of his work. I admired, what I did read, I admired it greatly. I thought he was a tremendous historian and also a very interesting man with pungent, strongly held views, some of which invited disagreement, some of which did not. But I thought, as an historian, he was in his own chosen field of Tudor Constitutional History, he was a very good historian.

Q. Pungently held views or pungently expressed views. Is an historian entitled to express views pungently which are different from those of the common place?

A. Most certainly, yes.

Q. So what makes an acceptable pungently held view and an unacceptable pungently held view, in your view? Is it the supposed political leanings of the person who does the expression?

A. No. I think that historians, what makes it, as it were, debatable within conventional academic, scholarly terms is

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whether historians' views are accepted -- I am trying to think of an accurate way of putting this -- whether historians views are put forward on the basis of documents which are available and on a ----

Q. The objective sources?

A. --- reasonable interpretation of those.

Q. You attach great importance to the objective use of sources, is that right?

A. I do, yes.

Q. Yes.

A. I think the sources, as it were, have a right of veto on what one can and what one cannot say.

Q. Express.

A. But within the area that is covered by the sources that you use, there is, of course, scope for some disagreement.

Q. You have done a certain amount of research into the Nazi period, have you not?

A. Yes.

Q. This was not originally your speciality, was it? Originally, you came from a different era of history?

A. Yes, I have researched on eras of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Q. For some reason the Nazi era is a profitable era of research if one writes books? I do not mean this in any sense as a criticism.

A. Well, I have to say the only book that I have done that is

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based on archival research on the Nazi period, a book called "Rituals of Retribution" on the issue of capital punishment in Germany since the 17th century, has sold very badly. It is far too long and I am told that Penguin regard it as something of an albatross.

Q. It contains acres of sludge, does it?

A. I would not describe it as sludge myself, no.

Q. But I know the temptation. Is it true one finds documents that oneself finds fascinating, but the readers probably do not?

A. Well, I think its length has daunted an English language readership. It is about to appear in German and I think Germans are less daunted by very lengthy books. But it does cover 300 years of history in a major area and not a handful of years. It does cover a large subject.

Q. I have a confession to make, Professor Evans. I had not heard of you before you were actually nominated as a witness in this case. This is not a criticism in any sense at all, and I wondered where on earth I could get a copy of your book. Then I found a copy of your book actually on my desk. Somebody actually sent it to me months earlier. I looked through it, and probably rather the same as you looked through my book "Hitler's War", you have never read my book "Hitler's War" from cover to cover except when this trial began, is that right?

A. That is true, yes.

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Q. You state in your expert report that you picked it up once and leafed through it, is that right?

A. That is right, yes. It was not really essentially on areas with which I was concerned.

Q. At that time you were not dealing with the Third Reich or with Adolf Hitler or with the decision-making processes?

A. Only in terms of teaching. I have been teaching courses on the Third Reich for some years.

Q. And it would never have occurred to you to put my book on the list of recommended works?

A. Not really. I think it is more concerned with military history than anything else. I do not know if you would accept that.

Q. And the courses that are taught in universities and colleges do not cover military history, is that correct?

A. Some do, but not the courses that I teach.

Q. In looking at the book, did it occur to you that I had had access to sources that no other historians had had, and that this might, therefore, have made it valuable for teaching courses?

A. As I have said, I mean, the sources -- of course, it occurred, of course, it was clear to me that you had a justified reputation for obtaining sources which other historians had not had access to, but these sources and your treatment of them were not, I felt, really useful for the kind of teaching that I was doing on the Third Reich.

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Q. Can I ask the witness to be given one of these little bundles, please, Miss Rogers? I am purely using you, Professor Evans, now as a means of getting this document before his Lordship. Are you familiar with the Internet?

A. Yes.

Q. Do you ever use the Internet?

A. Occasionally, yes. I have to say not very extensively.

Q. I am going to ask you at this stage to look at the first document, but you can leaf through if you wish. Are you familiar with the H Net which is an aspect of the Internet, a kind of communication between experts?

A. Not very, I have to say.

Q. And that there are various H Nets. There is H Net, Anti-Semitism and so on?

A. H German, and so on, yes.

Q. Are you familiar, Professor, with a Dr David Aaron Meyer, who is the Associate Professor of History and who runs the particular discussion group on the Internet called H Anti-Semitism?

A. At Dickinson State University?

Q. Yes.

A. I am not, no.

Q. He expresses an opinion in his e-mail to me dated August 23rd last year in which he says, "I have been familiar with your works for a very long time", meaning my works, "and find them exceptionally well written and

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researched". Would you share his opinion?

A. No.

Q. He is familiar with my works and he finds them exceptionally well written and researched. Never mind the "well written", but he finds them well researched. And you do not accept his opinion?

A. It depends what you mean by "well researched". I mean, I do not dispute the fact that you have very wide and deep knowledge of the source material for the Third Reich, particularly during the Second World War, above all, and of course it is quite right, as countless historians have pointed out, that you discovered many new sources.

Q. What have I done with these sources? Have I made them available immediately to the community?

A. I was about to go on to say that the problem for me is what you do with the sources when you then start to interpret them and write them up.

Q. But do I do two things with these sources, is this correct? On the one hand, I write my books based on them, on the other hand, I automatically placed the entire collection of these new sources in various institutes where people like yourself and your researchers and other historians around the world can immediately go and see them; is that correct?

A. Some of them you have placed, you have made available, and the others you have not.

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Q. Are you familiar with any collections that I have not immediately made available? Can you identify any?

A. Yes, the interrogations of Hans Aumeier, which have already been discussed in this courtroom, it took you four or five years to make those or six years to make those available.

Q. We have actually discussed them at some length in this courtroom, and it is true that I did not make the actual bundle of documents available to other historians after I discovered them. This is true. Can you suggest there may be a reason why I, having discovered that little scoop, did not make them immediately available to others?

A. Yes. It seemed to me that they were somewhat embarrassing for your position on the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz.

Q. Are you familiar with the letter that I wrote to Professor Robert Jan van Pelt in May 1996 drawing his attention to this bundle of documents?

A. That is four years after you discovered the documents and a letter to one person. That is not the same as making them generally available immediately.

Q. Would you agree that Professor Robert Jan van Pelt was the world's acknowledged expert on Auschwitz and he was the appropriate person to have his attention drawn to this file?

A. Yes, but I repeat, that is not the same as making them

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generally available immediately which is your initial claim you made a few minutes ago.

Q. Would you agree that there is a difference between my visiting elderly widows and persuading them to part with their diaries, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, something which is in the public domain already in the British public archives and where anybody can go and find it if they have sufficient nous, and nobody else has bothered to. There is a difference there.

A. I am not sure. It was in a very -- it is in a somewhat unexpected place where you might not expect to find it in the Public Record Office in the files of the Political Warfare Executive.

Q. Would you expect a researcher on Auschwitz to have sufficient acumen to go to the Public Record Office and look in the files of the War Office Military Intelligence, WO208, and in the catalogue find a file called "Interrogations of Hans Aumeier of Auschwitz", would that take much intelligence, do you think?

A. You have to know exactly where to look for in 19 -- I think these were only released in 1991 and 1992.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I ask the same question in a different way? If you had come across the Aumeier diary, I think it is a diary, what would you have done with it if you felt it was your duty to place it in the public domain?

A. Published an article about it, I think, in a learned

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journal. It is a somewhat problematic document, but I think it is of some interest and importance.

MR IRVING: Professor Evans, have you seen a letter of mine in the files which are disclosed to you by way of discovery in which I wrote to the Institute of Contemporary History -- disregarding your views about that Institute at this moment -- and suggested precisely that, that this item, the Aumeier papers, should be published in some learned journal?

A. Which Institute of Contemporary ----

Q. The one in California, the IHR?

A. Oh, that is the institute Of Historical Review, so-called.

Q. Yes, I am sorry. I gave you the wrong name, yes.

A. Yes, I do not regard that as a respectable academic Institution.

Q. But was this not an offer, a suggestion, by me that this document should be placed in the public domain by way of somebody writing a learned paper about it?

A. If you place your letter in front of me, a copy of it, I would be happy to look at it.

Q. I am asking a general question here, what degree of access have you been given to all the documents that I made available to the Defence by way of discovery? Have you seen everything or have you had everything available to you or have you been able to pick and choose or have you had just limited access?

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A. Everything has been made available, but, of course, as you will appreciate, there is an enormous quantity of material and ----

Q. Have you read my entire correspondence between myself and the IHR?

A. We have certainly had access to it and it has been looked through and some of it, of course, is cited in my report.

Q. Professor Evans, you expressed the opinion in your report that my diaries may have been written for some ulterior motive?

A. Could you point to the page in my report where I say that, please?

Q. That sounded to me as though it was a rehearsed remark. I shall avoid wasting the court's time. It is in the first few pages and I shall say, is it true that it is your opinion that I may have written the diaries for some reason other than one would normally write a diary? What are your suspicions about why I wrote that?

A. Would you like to point me to the page where I -- you see, I have a problem, Mr Irving, which is that, having been through your work, I cannot really accept your version of any document, including passages in my own report, without actually having it in front of me, so I think this may be a problem for us.

Q. If may make things easier for you, of course. That is precisely why I do not and I do not think his Lordship

P-41

will accept that kind of answer to my questions either. Let me phrase a simple question to you. You have read all my diaries or you have had all my diaries made available to you and you have read extensively ----

A. They have been made available. I have to say they were not particularly useful for my report. My report is concerned almost entirely with your published writings and speeches.

Q. Did you find frequently in the diaries of the 1970s descriptions of my meetings with members of Hitler's private staff?

A. I do not think I refer to that in my report.

Q. No. Did the other experts ----

A. There are one or two references in my report.

Q. --- Professor Levin and Professor Eatwell have access to these diaries as well and also their researchers?

A. Indeed they did. I think they -- yes, they did.

Q. Did you form any kind of consensus about these diaries? Did you form any kind of opinion as to whether, for example, the diaries were written with a view to publication?

A. I have not discussed the diaries with Professor Eatwell or Professor Levin.

Q. Did you form an opinion yourself about whether the diaries were perfectly ordinary diaries written for whatever psychological reason people have to write diaries, or were

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they written rather like Alan Clark with an intention of publishing later on or somewhere in between?

A. This is really getting into the realms of speculation about your psychology, Mr Irving, which I would rather avoid.

Q. I am asking you about your opinion. I am asking your opinion, having read the diaries. You have expressed an opinion in the report and I am asking what your opinion is now.

A. Can you direct me to the place in the report where I express this opinion?

Q. I am asking you what your opinion is now. Do you think the diaries were written genuinely or were they written as a camouflage?

A. Let me try to find this place that we are trying to discuss here in the report.

Q. I am not trying to trap you into providing a useful answer. I am trying to lay the groundwork for questions which will be based on the diaries, Professor Evans.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am just looking at the very end of it, Professor Evans, but I cannot quite find what I think perhaps Mr Irving has in mind.

A. It is page 16, paragraph 1.5.6 which I said I have had access to his complete private diaries, where I simply describe them as "private diaries".

MR IRVING: Can you not just answer simply my question? Having

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had that access to these private diaries, have you formed an opinion?

A. No, not really. I mean, I do not, I do not really want to speculate as to why they are being written. Certainly some of them, as you know, are published, you have put extracts up and you publish extracts. So, from that point of view, certainly, I would imagine there was an intention of publishing at least part of them because you have actually published them.

Q. Yes.

A. But whether that applies to all of them is a completely -- is a rather different matter. It is rather similar, in a way, to Goebbels's diaries. As you know, those which he published in his lifetime, those were the early 1930s, he did excise quite substantial chunks before he published them.

Q. In Goebbels', for example, and I do not accept there is any comparison, he wrote handwritten diaries and he dictated typescript diaries, did he not?

A. That is right, yes, and he signed a publishing contract, as you know, of his diaries.

Q. And he published, for example, the 1933 diary as a book later on which was quite close but not the same as ----

A. That is what I was referring to, yes. He excised certain parts of it, so one could not say that everything in his earlier diaries were written with a view to publication.

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Q. In your expert report you said that I was obliged to turn over my diaries to the Defence. What did you mean by that?

A. Could you point to me the page where I say that?

Q. Oh, dear!

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, do we really need to go to that? I expect you probably did say that.

A. Well, I really, my Lord, would ask I be pointed to where I say that.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: All right, if you really want it?

A. I am afraid I do, yes.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you help Mr Irving? It is difficult to be asked to -- it is a report running to about 750 pages.

MR RAMPTON: Can I tell your Lordship what actually happened?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I know exactly what happened which is why I wondered whether Professor Evans really needed to be referred to the documents.

MR RAMPTON: Your Lordship knows what happened? Oh, well, that is fine. Then there cannot be any contest because Mr Irving knows too.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I know. I think this is perhaps not a useful exercise.

MR IRVING: It is wording that he used there in the expert report. It is adding a flavour here as though I was dragged kicking and screaming into the courtroom and taken under armed guard back to my house ----

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MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, can we just short circuit this? Can I just see whether we cannot short circuit? You were compelled by the process of what is now called disclosure to hand over a whole lot of what you very understandably regard as private documents because they are your own diaries.

MR IRVING: That is not quite so, my Lord.

A. I have the passage here: "Irving has been obliged to disclose an enormous mass of material in addition to the list of documents he initially agreed to supply". I understood that you were indeed obliged to hand over your private diaries to defence by court order.

Q. Did you understand that I was ----

A. Is that not the case?

Q. --- obliged to hand over my entire diaries?

A. That is my understanding, yes, because they were deemed to be relevant to the case.

Q. Yes. Was it not the case, in fact, that originally the Defence asked to see any diary references to, I believe, half a dozen or a dozen people in my entire diaries?

A. I cannot really answer that. I have not been privy to every move that the defence has made, but I am aware of the fact that the Master of the Queen's Bench did order you to hand over all the diaries because they were deemed to be relevant to the case.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you attach any criticism to Mr Irving for

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his reluctance to hand over his entire diaries?

A. My Lord, I think it is quite understandable.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: So do I. Are we gaining anything by this?

MR IRVING: My lord, there was no reluctance to hand over the diaries at all; quite the contrary. Will you accept, witness, that, in fact, when I was asked to provide the diary references to these dozen people, which would have involved me in an inordinate amount of labour, looking through 49 volumes of diaries for 10 names, will you accept that I volunteered to provide the entire diaries to the defence whereupon Mr Anthony Julius said yes?

A. If you can show me the documents in which you did so.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am going to stop this because I do not think this is helping me at all. I do not think any criticism attaches to you in relation to the diaries and, even if it did, it really would not bear on the issues we have to decide.

MR IRVING: I am sorry I am being so obtuse, my Lord, but I am reaching a point which I will now bring forward by one or two sentences, if I may?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, do.

MR IRVING (To the witness): You have had at your disposal, have you not, witness, therefore, either jointly or severally as a defence team, something like 20 or 30 million words of my private diaries which I made no attempt to conceal, is that so?

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A. Which were disclosed by a court order, that is right, yes.

Q. Will you accept that the court order concerned only the limitations on whom these diaries could be shown to apart from yourselves, and that they should be destroyed after this case was over? In other words, a court order was requested by myself to protect the privacy of those documents?

A. I understood that the Defence went to court in order to obtain access to the documents. There may have been an additional -- I think there was an additional court order which restricted access yes.

Q. You have had 20 or 30 million words of my private diaries, also complete transcripts of my telephone conversations where they were recorded on tape and transcribed. You have also had transcripts of innumerable speeches and public lectures that I delivered. Out of this enormous documentation, you and the entire defence team have picked one or two sentences which you then displayed for the delectation of the entire world, have you not?

A. Well, I think it is more than one or two. I think I made a distinction between the diaries which, as I said, were not really very useful for my report because my report is mainly concerned with your published work as an historian and, clearly, your private diaries are concerned with many other things. So you will have noticed as you look through my report that I do not really say very much about

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them and I cite them in just a handful of cases and they are really not very central. What you have on the published record, in terms of speeches and writings, is a very different matter. And in 740 ----

Q. Would you agree that diaries go to the state of mind more than speeches, private diaries?

A. In the 740 pages of my report, I do cite all of these other things extremely extensively. I think it is more one or two sentences. It is more like several hundred, including some very lengthy extracts.

Q. We are at present dealing just with the diaries. We will deal with the other matters bit by bit. But will you accept that if you had 20 or 30 million words of diaries in front of you -- I have to confess, I have not counted them; I have just done a back of an envelope calculation as to how many words are involved -- but you have had all these diaries which go very clearly to my state of mind, my private state of mind, and you have found at the end of this enormous mountainous task, one ditty?

A. That is not my report.

Q. To prove that I am racist?

A. I am sorry, that is not quoted in my report.

Q. Well, I am afraid I have to put to you this question because you have had access to these and, unfortunately, the person who put that in his report is not presenting himself for cross-examination.

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A. But, Mr Irving, my Lord, I hope I can say that I really do not feel I should answer or can answer questions on other ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: There is a question that you can be asked which you would have to answer and I think -- may I ask it? No, you do not have to answer for other people's thoughts, but I think the question is this -- Mr Irving, tell me if I am wrong -- the use that is made of the ditty is unrepresentative of the diaries in their totality. Is that really what you are asking?

MR IRVING: That is precisely the point I was going to make, my Lord.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a question you may or may not be able to answer, but ask the question.

A. Yes. One thing I want to say is that your diaries, Mr Irving, are not introspective diaries. There are many, many different kinds of diaries but you do not fill them with agonising over your own state of mind, so that it is often rather difficult. They are not primarily sources for your state of mind. Indeed, that is not what I in particular used them for. I cannot answer for witnesses and what they will have used your diaries for. I used them principally for identifying, such as I could, contacts that you had had with Holocaust deniers. That was my main purpose of looking through them.

Q. We are going to come to that later.

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A. But for other things, for views that you express and so on, I had all your published work, and that surely is enough.

Q. We will come to that in a minute.

A. There is a mass of more work there.

Q. Can I ask you at this point, if, for example, you had come across in the diaries sentences like "Zündel is a lunatic" or "Faurisson is completely irresponsible or incorrigible", or something like that, would you have quoted that in your report, or would you have left it out?

A. Can you point to me the places in the diaries where you make those----

Q. It is a hypothetical question and we will come back to chapter and verse next week.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Maybe the best way of dealing with it is to ask the witness to answer the question that I put, namely do you think that the ditty is selected and that it is an unrepresentative entry in one of the diaries, if you look at the totality of what is in the diaries?

A. It depends, my Lord, what you mean by "unrepresentative". There is not a ditty a day.

Q. I think the word is fairly clear in the context of my question.

A. There is not a ditty a day, it is one ditty, but there are many other remarks of that sort. That is only one ditty. It is not full of these things.

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MR IRVING: You say there are many other remarks of that sort?

A. Yes.

Q. Did you quote any, or did any of the witnesses to your knowledge quote any of these other remarks?

A. I only know what I have been reading in the court transcripts.

Q. From the diary. We are just talking at this stage about the diaries.

A. I really cannot answer for other witnesses.

Q. I have had held up around the world as a racist who has poisoned the mind of my infant.

A. Not by me, Mr Irving. I have not quoted your offensive racist comments in my report.

Q. Or the Defence team of which you are part. You have not quoted my----?

A. Offensive comments in my report.

Q. Which offensive racist comments have I made then?

A. You just referred to them.

Q. Apart from the ditty?

A. You just referred to them yourself.

Q. We are referring here to the ditty from the diary.

A. Yes.

Q. I have been held up by the defence in this case to obloquy around the world. In yesterday's Guardian there is this photograph of me and the headline which his Lordship can read, "The Bogey Man in the Nursery", the Guardian

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newspaper again.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think that is legitimate. I think I have asked the question that can be asked. I am sorry, Mr Rampton, I did not see you were on your feet.

MR RAMPTON: I agree, and what is quite wrong is for Mr Irving, once again if I may say so and I will say it bluntly, to distort the record by referring to just one of the goodness knows how many examples that I have cross-examined him about and that have been noticed in the newspapers.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: There is a limit to what you can achieve by this cross-examination. You can put it, and I hope I have put it for you, that really they have picked out -- it is cherry picking. That is what you are really accusing the Defence of.

MR IRVING: This is the one cherry that they have found in the diaries, my Lord, and I insist on this. If Mr Rampton wishes to produce others from the diaries?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: In due course he will. He cannot do it now.

MR RAMPTON: I am just going to be going through it all again. I suppose Mr Irving remembers how God was reaching the Final Solution of the black problem with Aids in South Africa.

MR IRVING: We will deal with that when the time comes.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, please, we must focus on what this witness is here for.

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MR IRVING: You said that it is unrepresentative?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have not said it is unrepresentative.

MR IRVING: I am sorry, you have used the word "unrepresentative". I say it was unrepresentative? It was 19 words out of 30 million.

A. It is not quoted in my report, Mr Irving. I am here to answer questions on my report. You may ask other witnesses on their reports.

Q. Do you know what percentage of me is therefore racist? .00016 per cent of me is racist.

A. Is that a question?

Q. Which means that 99.9984 per cent of me is not, according to the diaries.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I do not think this is really helpful. Can we leave it this way? I have got a clip of what the Defendants rely on for their allegation that you are a racist. I will have to make what I can of that. You have asked the question that this witness I think has answered and I personally think that we would do well to move on.

MR IRVING: That is right, my Lord. The reason for asking this witness is that he said yes, he read the diaries, as much he needed to. He says this because he has formed the opinion that they are not very introspective.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: He has given his answer. You may not agree with it but he has given his answer.

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MR IRVING: Can I now put to the witness the photographs, or is this not the appropriate moment?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not know what you are going to put.

MR RAMPTON: My Lord, this is something the witness cannot possibly answer questions upon.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: It depends a bit what the question is. Tell me what the question is going to be and then I will decide whether you can ask it.

MR IRVING: The question will be: Witness, if you see photographs of members of my staff whom I have employed over the last 20 years, does it strike you that I am a racist?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: What is your reaction to that?

MR RAMPTON: My Lord, can I say this? This witness is not here to give evidence about whether or not Mr Irving is a racist.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: He is perfectly open to cross-examination, I think, on his view. He may say, "I cannot answer because I have not seen the documents or seen the evidence".

MR RAMPTON: With respect, I do not think he can. He is here as an expert in history. He is not here as an expert in racism.

MR IRVING: He has accused me of anti-Semitism and racism in his report.

MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, it is for your Lordship to decide in

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the end, and opinion evidence about whether or not Mr Irving is a racist is not admissible, with respect.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not so sure about that. The trouble is with this report I am not able to go to the passage that I think may be there. Unless you seek to argue it very strongly, Mr Rampton, I am inclined to accept that it can be put to this witness, I do not know what his answer is going to be, that Mr Irving has over the years employed a number of coloured people, does that have any influence on this witness's views of his agenda, if there is one?

MR RAMPTON: That may be right but, if the witness is entitled to express a view about that, which I doubt because he is an historian, not a sociologist, even if he were a sociologist, I doubt it would help your Lordship, but he is not. But it would involve his being shown everything that I relied on as showing that Mr Irving is a racist, and only in the light of that information can this witness fairly answer a question about the colour of the skin of Mr Irving's servants.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I suspect that the position actually is with Professor Evans that he knows pretty much what the Defendants' case on this.

MR RAMPTON: I do not know whether he does or not. I certainly have not discussed it with him.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Shall we find out? Professor Evans, have you been reading the transcripts of this case?

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A. Yes, I have.

Q. Have you seen the cross-examination that took place on the issue of racism?

A. Yes, I have.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am going to permit the question, but I do not think we want to spend terribly long on this.

MR IRVING: Very well. I am landing you a clip of five pages of photographs. Can you see the date on the earliest one? Is it 1980?

A. Yes.

Q. Does it appear to show a female of Barbadian or Caribbean descent standing at the door of the car, a Rolls Royce, with her mother?

A. Yes.

Q. Will you turn the page, please? Does this show another woman of ethnic origin, of coloured origin?

A. It is hard to tell.

Q. Asian or black?

A. Possibly.

Q. Can you just look briefly at all the others and confirm that they are all ethnics working in an office?

A. They are indeed.

Q. Apparently quite content?

A. Yes.

Q. Would you accept from me that they were all my personal assistants over the years concerned, and that they

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received a proper salary from me?

A. Have you got documentary proof of that?

Q. Yes.

A. Could I have a look at it, please?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, let us take it as read that these ladies were all employed by Mr Irving. Does that, in your view, Professor Evans, affect the question whether, in his writings and in what he said, Mr Irving has displayed evidence of a racist attitude? That is the question. Then we are going to move on.

A. Yes. In the end I do not think it does, my Lord.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right. Now lets move to something else, Mr Irving.

MR IRVING: Yes. This is another contentious issue, but we will deal with it very rapidly. Professor Evans, you have heard Mr Rampton talk about the expense of this trial and about how much it is costing per day no doubt?

A. No.

Q. Are you aware of the fact that the trial is costing a considerable amount each day that it runs?

A. I imagine it must be. I have no idea how much.

Q. In the little bundle of documents I gave you, headed "from Monday" will you see one page from the transcript, about page 8 or thereabouts, headed January 28th 2000?

A. Yes.

Q. Does this transcript appear to show that I have suggested

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to the court that, if they were to send members of the Defence to Krakow to scrape the roof off the alleged gas chamber at Auschwitz and find the holes, I would wind up the case immediately because I could not possibly continue with my complaint?

A. Yes, and the witness says he cannot comment on that.

Q. The witness says he cannot comment, that is quite right. To your knowledge, has any attempt been made by the Defence to end the case rapidly in this dramatic way?

A. I cannot really comment on that, I am afraid, any more than the witness you questioned could comment. I am not an expert on Auschwitz, Mr Irving. I am not here to answer questions about Auschwitz. I am here to answer questions on my report. So far, you have hardly asked a single one.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is for me, Professor Evans, thank you very much.

MR IRVING: His Lord is aware of these problems that we have with the presentation of the Defence witnesses in this case. Are you familiar with the fact that a number of Defence witnesses in this case are not going to be giving evidence?

A. I think one or two of them are not. I am not quite sure actually.

Q. Are you aware of the fact that the Second Defendant is not going to give evidence, Professor Lipstadt?

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A. Professor Lipstadt, yes, I am aware of that.

Q. And that Professor Levin and Professor Eatwell will not be giving evidence?

A. Yes, that is right. I understand, my Lord, that the Defence are perfectly entitled to do that.

Q. Yes, and I make no criticism of them for that. Am I allowed to put to him a page of Professor Eatwell's report, my Lord?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: In principle, yes.

MR IRVING: It would be page 74, paragraph 4.6. I can read out the lines concerned?

A. Could I have a copy, please?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: It might be simpler, Professor Evans, if you hear the line that is going to be read to you and see whether you need the context.

MR IRVING: My Lord, I think this probably goes to a matter we have dealt with, so I am not going to ask it.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: All right.

MR IRVING: I am sorry, yes, he does need it. Page 76 now. I think I ought just to refer in fact to page 74, to what Professor Eatwell about the matter we disposed of.

A. Yes.

Q. Page 74, paragraph 4.6, at line 9 Professor Eatwell, who was one of the experts who was working in tandem with you writes: "Yet Irving is an open advocate of the repatriation of immigrants. The fact that he has employed

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'coloured' people does prove he is liberal". This is Professor Eatwell's view.

A. Yes.

Q. "The point here is not simply that he might perceive the advantages of this practice in terms of defusing charges of racism." In other words, Professor Eatwell, can I take it, is there suggesting that I deliberately employed this coloured staff in order not to be accused of racism?

A. I think he is suggesting it is a possibility, though I cannot answer for him what he intends there.

Q. It makes it very difficult for people, does it not, that we are hanged if we do and we are shot if we do not, so to speak?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think that is really a question. That is a comment that you can make at the end of the case.

MR IRVING: It is. The question I would ask Professor Evans, then, is what does it take to prove that one is not racist if one employs coloured people in exactly the same way as one employs whites, one does not prefer them or disadvantage them in any way, one pays them exactly the same amount.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That again, if I may say so, Mr Irving, is really argument and I understand the argument. But I do not think that Professor Evans can do much more on racism than he has done by his previous answers.

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MR IRVING: Will you now go to page 76, Professor Eatwell?

A. My name is Evans, not Eatwell. I did not write this report.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Evans, will you take it that between us we will try and keep the questioning legitimate?

A. OK. It is just that I do find it very difficult to answer questions on other people's reports which I have not written, which I have not researched, and which were not written in tandem with me but were written independently.

MR IRVING: We are appealing here to your common sense as a learned person really, asking for your opinion.

A. But I am here as an expert, Mr Irving.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us get on.

MR IRVING: I am sure that his Lordship would have no objection if you wish to sit actually, Professor.

A. I am happier standing actually. It makes moving around with the documents easier.

Q. Page 76 at paragraph 4.11 the same kind of argument. Again, it is by Professor Eatwell and not yourself but I am entitled, I think, to put the question to you. "The fact that Irving has on occasion made some criticisms of Hitler does not prove that he is an anti-fascist. There are clear tactical reasons to adopt such a position." Is this your argument also, Professor Evans?

A. I think he is concerned here with your current political

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position, whereas I am concerned with your historical writings.

Q. Yes. So would you argue the fact that, and I shall show you this next week, I have made large numbers of statements in my biographies of various top Nazis, which can in no way be described as pro-Hitler or pro-Nazi, would you agree with Professor Eatwell's inference or imputation that I have done this in order to defuse criticism and for no other reason?

A. You would have to show me the statements first before I could comment on them.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is, I suppose, in a way a legitimate answer, but can I just persuade you that it can be answered generally in this way? It is right, if you read Hitler's War, that there are critical statements made about Hitler, quite a number of them, and the question is simply this, and perhaps you would be good enough to try and answer it. Have you seen evidence that those are inserted into Hitler's War for what you might call tactical reasons, in other words for Mr Irving to be able to draw attention to them and use them in disproof of any allegation that he is a Hitler partisan?

A. That is very speculative, I think. What I do do in my report is to go through some of the critical points that Mr Irving makes, and they do not, in my view, detract from the fact that he is in general someone who admires Hitler,

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put it like that. I would not really want to speculate on why they are being put in for political, what political reasons they might be put in for, which is really what Professor Eatwell is talking about. I think he is talking about something slightly different. My concern is with Mr Irving's attitude toward Hitler in his historical writings. Of course, there are criticisms of Hitler there, I perfectly accept that.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is, if I may say so, a perfectly complete and fair answer.

A. It is not really a concern of mine to show why they have been put there.

MR IRVING: You would have preferred the criticisms to be stated more loudly perhaps, or more criticisms and fewer bits of admiration, as you call it?

A. I would not presume to dictate to you what you write in your books, Mr Irving.

Q. Oh? But this is precisely what you have done in your expert report, is it not? You have said "I disagree entirely with his standpoint". You do not like where I put my pointer on the scale, so to speak, is that correct?

A. My criticisms are concerned with your historical method.

Q. Are you aware that the Second Defendant said that my admiration of Hitler went so far, by imputation, by inference, that I had a portrait of Adolf Hitler hanging

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on my wall in my study?

A. I do in fact cite I think in my report a book by Robert Harris called "Serving Hitler" where I think he mentions something like that, if I can find the place where it is.

Q. I can save you time perhaps by showing you the only portrait of Hitler which is in my possession. Can I show you this and you can see it from there?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page 212, I think.

MR IRVING: My Lord, can your Lordship also see it? It is a post card on which Adolf Hitler sketched his own likeness and which was given to me by his private secretary and so it has a certain intrinsic value. Would you accept that this is what Robert Harris is probably referring to?

A. It may well be, I do not know. Let me quote from Robert Harris: "Looking down upon him (that is you) as he worked from the wall above his desk was a self-portrait of Hitler".

MR JUSTICE GRAY: What is being put is that the self-portrait that he was writing about was the post card.

A. That may well be. I do not know. You would have to ask Mr Harris about that, but his work seems to be an accurate work, as far as I am concerned. I do not recall Mr Irving raising objections to that sentence in it.

MR IRVING: But you accept that to describe that as being a portrait of Adolf Hitler hanging on my wall gives the wrong impression, does it not? Would that be right?

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A. If it was hanging on your wall, it gives the right impression.

Q. If it was not hanging on the wall, if it was occasionally shown to visitors as something of a trophy, like Robert Harris, who is a good friend, would that be right?

A. Well, if you are saying that it was not looking down upon him as he worked from the wall above his desk, then I suppose you would be right.

Q. Given your expert evidence, as you have, in your report, and having read the expert evidence of Professor Eatwell and Professor Levin, you are quite content to level at me also the charge of anti-Semitism, is that right?

A. No, it is not right. I do not describe you as an anti-Semitic, unless you can show me a passage in my report where I do.

Q. Do you consider me to be an anti-Semite from all that you know, from the books that I have written and that you have read, or statements that I have made?

A. I do not want to speculate about your state of mind. However, I do cite numerous statements of yours which I regard as anti-Semitic.

Q. Can you categorise these statements in some way, or would you prefer, without being specific -- I mean, are these just statements critical of the Jewish people, or specific Jews like Simon Wiesenthal or particular Jews, or is there a general animosity that you detect in me towards the

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Jewish? How would you define "anti-Semitism"? I think that is the question I am going to ask first. How would you define "anti-Semitism" for the purposes of this trial?

A. Well, I am not an expert in that area, but anti-Semitism can be defined very simply. There are numerous different ways you can define anti-Semitism. There are different levels and degrees of anti-Semitism.

Q. You just called me anti-Semitic, so you must know what you meant.

A. There are different levels and degrees of anti-Semitism and so on. It does seem to me that in your writings, and I quote numbers of them in my report, you do blame the Jews for the Holocaust, you try to pin responsibility for their misfortunes in the Third Reich on themselves. You use language in describing Jews in the present day that I regard as anti-Semitic.

Q. Yes.

A. All of those things. Anti-Semitism obviously at its most basic is hostility to hatred of and contempt for Jews, but it is also a political ideology, which involves a belief in a conspiracy, that Jews are conspiratorial in some way, that they are conspiring to undermine whatever it might be.

Q. A kind of common endeavour? How do you define conspiracy in that respect?

A. A secret combination or behind the scenes.

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Q. And none of these allegations should ever be levelled at any people, right? True or false? One should never say these things? Is that what are you saying?

A. No, I am not saying that should never be said, true or false, but it should not be said if it is false.

Q. If it is true, then it cannot be called anti-Semitism, it would just be called foolishness, perhaps, to make the allegations?

A. Well I have to say that I believe that belief in the world of Jewish conspiracy to do whatever it might be, whether it is to suppress the works of David Irving or undermine Germany in the 1930s, is a fantastic belief that has no grounds of reality.

Q. Are we talking here in the hypothetical or have you some reason for suggesting that I believe there is a world Jewish conspiracy to undermine my writings, Professor?

A. It seems to me from what you have said in your opening statement that you do believe there is some kind of conspiracy, but leaving that aside, I come back to the fact in my report I do quote a number of instances of views, interpretations and language which I regard as anti-Semitic in your writings and particularly your speeches.

Q. Are the Jews, either as a people or their elected or unelected leaders, in some way immune from criticism? Is there to be no criticism for whatever reason?

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A. Certainly not. That is not the case at all.

Q. If one criticises either the Jewish people or the leaders for specific matters, is that ipso facto anti-Semitism?

A. No, certainly not.

Q. So there are circumstances in which, wisely or otherwise, one would be entitled to criticise a body of Jews for a particular action without it necessarily being anti-Semitism.

A. Yes, individual Jews certainly, or groups. I think it becomes more problematical when you start defining Jews as a race or a world community.

Q. I can never understand the difference between calling them a religion or a race and I do not want to get into that region. I have never made any distinction. If, for example, one was to point to the fact that most of the leadership of the Hungarian government at the time of the anti-government uprising in 1956 was Jewish, would that be an anti-Semitic remark?

A. I am not an expert on the Hungarian uprising.

Q. But, if it was so, if they were perceived to be Jewish, put it that way, by the public, would it be anti-Jewish to point to this element?

A. You have a number of hypotheticals there. You would have to show first of all that they were perceived to be that way by the public, which is rather difficult.

Q. Let us move on to the NKVD if it was stated that a large

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proportion, a disproportionate number of the leading officers of the NKVD, the Soviet Secret Police, were Jewish would that be an anti-Semitic remark to point that out?

A. Again, I am not an expert on the NKVD.

Q. But if? We are looking at the word "if".

A. It is very hypothetical. You would have to show concrete sound evidence that (a) they were Jewish and (b) that they were acting in some kind of conspiracy or action because they were Jewish.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I think I am going to intervene because I think we are making very, very slow progress. Professor Evans certainly deals with anti-Semitism and you can direct questions to him as to whether there is any justification for a charge against you of anti-Semitism. But I think discussing whether it is anti-Semitic to say that officers in the NKVD are Jewish is really not helping me at all.

MR IRVING: If he is going to describe somebody as being anti-Semitic, I wanted to know what criteria he set.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: We know what criteria the Defendants set and I think one can assume that that is the target at which they are aiming, if I can put it that way.

MR IRVING: To my mind, to be an anti-Semitic, you have to be mindlessly anti-Jewish.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is something we will probably have to

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debate at the end of the case, but I do not think now is the time to debate it with Professor Evans.

MR IRVING: Having read all the documents that have been placed at your disposal, this I am sure I can ask you ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes you can.

MR IRVING: My Lord, with respect, you do not know what I am about to ask him.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do. Go on, ask him.

MR IRVING: Are you aware of the fact that a number of Jewish bodies and organisations over the last 20 years have attempted prevent me from publishing books, delivering speeches, attending lectures and functions at universities and the like?

A. I am aware that you allege this, yes.

Q. Having read the documents, having read the letters that are in discovery, having read the papers that I have obtained by various legal proceedings belonging to a certain British body and their equivalent bodies in the United States and Canada?

A. My report is concerned with your work as an historian. What I should say is that there is an enormous amount of material that is at the disposable of the Defence in this case. I have not read it all. I have read the material which is relevant to my particular report which is concerned with your work as an historian. I have not read systematically through the mass of material which is

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relevant to the political aspects of the case, and other matters such as that.

Q. My Lord, this question now goes to the first Defendant and I am going to ask the witness, do you teach about fascism to your students?

A. Yes.

Q. Are you familiar with this kind of book, Fascism For Beginners?

A. I know that series, yes.

Q. Is it a commendable series?

A. Not very, I have to say, no.

Q. Can I put to you, if I may, you have it already in the little bundle, if you turn to the 9th page of the little bundle will you find the front page of that book in there.

A. Yes.

Q. Fascism for Beginners written by Stuart Hood and Litzer Janz, who is the artist I believe. Would you turn to the next page and tell me who distributes this book in the United Kingdom, Canada, Europe and Asia?

A. The Penguin group.

Q. The Penguin Group does. Is that the first Defendant in this case Penguin Books Limited?

A. I believe so, yes.

Q. Would you turn to page 11, The Spread of Neo Fascism? Is this a chapter on the spread of fascism through Britain?

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A. I am prepared to accept your statement that it is, yes.

Q. It talks about how the these various parties, including a party called the Austrian Freedom Party, which obviously has no hope of ever coming to power ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, what possible relevance has this got to this case?

MR IRVING: If you will turn to page 12, my Lord, the relevance becomes plain. Did Hitler really exist, and there is a certain gentleman putting on Swastika eye glasses there. Do you have that?

A. Yes.

Q. Do you see anybody in the courtroom who is like or resembles the person who is putting on the Swastika eye glasses?

A. It is not a very good likeness, I have to say.

Q. Is he labelled as David Irving?

A. Yes, he is labelled as David Irving.

Q. Is he saying, "This myth of the mass murder of Jews in the death factories of Auschwitz which in fact never took place"?

A. Yes, he is.

Q. And does it half way down the page say: "British historian David Irving who describes himself as a mild fascist"?

A. Yes.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I am still puzzled as to what the relevance of this is. I can see that you object to it.

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What do you say it goes to?

MR IRVING: The first Defendants in this case have a record of publishing books attacking me, my Lord.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: If I may put it this way, so what? The way in which you can rely on it, can I try to help you, is that you can say that you are particularly distressed at the libel of which you are complaining in this action by the fact that Penguin Books keep having a go at you, and ridiculing you by that sort of portrayal, but that is a matter for your evidence. That is not a matter for cross-examination of Professor Evans.

MR IRVING: My Lord, how else can I put this kind of document before the court?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: You could have done it, I am not being critical of you, and you can certainly do it as far as I am concerned later on if you want to, you can simply say, "And here is a book which I read and it caused me additional distress because this is a publishing house that seems to have it in for me".

MR RAMPTON: I also think, if I may say so, that we need to be notified. I am not saying there is any objection to this now but, normally speaking, if one tenders evidence to the court in modern times in support of one's case, one is obliged to tell the other side first.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a fair point as well. Shall we leave it then so far as Professor Evans is concerned and, if you

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want to give evidence about it later on then you can and Mr Rampton has now been forewarned, and he can cross-examine.

MR IRVING: This precise book is referred to in my claim and also in my reply to their defence, and it has been in my discovery.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I did not know that.

MR RAMPTON: I did not either.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but I really do not think Professor Evans -- I am sympathetic, Mr Irving, and I am perhaps bending the rules in your favour a little bit, to letting you put some of the points made against you in some of the experts' reports when those experts are not going to be called to give evidence, but there is not unlimited latitude and I think this goes over the boundary, if I may say so.

MR IRVING: But, with respect, my Lord, I fail to see how I could put it in otherwise because I cannot do it in my closing speech, obviously.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, you can, I have just told you, you can give evidence about it. This is not something that is relevant in cross-examination at all. I am trying to explain to you. It is something that you can adduce in your own evidence as being evidence going to the issue of damage. That is the way to deal with it, not in cross-examining any witness, and certainly not Professor

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Evans.

MR IRVING: When you were engaged to write this expert report, were you shown at any time any law report that had been produced by Penguin books in this country, any libel reading report on the book, on the book that is complained of?

A. No.

Q. When your books are published in the United Kingdom, your own books, are they subjected to a legal reading to see if they libel anyone?

A. Not that I have ever been aware of.

Q. So, to your knowledge, therefore, as far as you know, there was no report prepared by any firm of lawyers, reputable lawyers, on the book before it was published?

A. All I can say is that I did not see any such report. I cannot answer as to whether there was one or not.

Q. I am not going to be allowed to ask him questions about intermarriage then, am I?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Sorry, I am not quite sure I understand what the intended question is.

MR IRVING: Well, following through the question of whether Jews would be expected to live by a different set of rules than those that they criticise? If I am criticised here for the racist ditty once again, as I have been, am I entitled in some way to introduce evidence about what the Second Defendant has written herself on precisely this

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matter?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: About intermarriage?

MR IRVING: About intermarriage, and if so, can I do it now?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is quite difficult to answer that question without knowing what it is you are going to produce. Have you got a copy of it because, perhaps if you would be good enough to hand it in and then I can perhaps look at it over the adjournment and you can come back to it?

MR IRVING: There were several articles which the Second Defendant has written in this respect. I will yellow highlight the only part that your Lordship should read.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but do you mind coming back to it later when I have had a chance to look at it?

MR IRVING: Yes. I would like to put to you Professor Levin's report now which is at page 125.

A. Sorry. Mine only has 123 pages.

Q. Levin or Eatwell?

A. Levin.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: So does mine.

MR IRVING: Oh, dear! This is covering the diary entries for 1995. It is paragraph 11.

A. OK. I think I can find it.

Q. I am just going to take one sample paragraph?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is around 108, I think.

A. Yes paragraph 11.

MR IRVING: Beginning with "Irving was also".

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A. Ah, no.

Q. Covering the diary entries for 1995.

A. No, I am afraid I cannot find it.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I cannot.

MR RAMPTON: We are looking for it in our bundle.

MR IRVING: This question goes purely to the accuracy of Professor Levin's style of extracting the diaries.

A. Ah, right.

MR RAMPTON: There is a paragraph 11 on page 107, my Lord.

MR IRVING: Beginning "Irving was also"?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I do not think it does.

MR RAMPTON: No, it is not that.

A. Yes, I have it here. It is at page 102, paragraph 11: "Irving was also forced to confront various incidents", is that it?

MR IRVING: Yes.

A. The Key West landlady evicted him from her hotel, etc., etc.

Q. Yes. Would you carry on down to the next item, please? "Irving's April 13th diary entry recounts his displeasure at having his name mentioned 'in the most disparaging terms in half a dozen places' along with supposed errors in an official Canadian government report."

A. Yes.

Q. Are you familiar with that so-called official Canadian government report?

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A. No.

Q. I am going to ask that bundle E should be put to you. There is a bundle called "Global". Do we have a copy?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I know the one.

MR IRVING: Let us see if we can find. It is page 116 of that bundle.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: In E, has the witness got E?

MR IRVING: It is a very long document beginning at page 116, headed with the words: "Confidential. David Irving, biographical information". You see at page 116? I am just taking this paragraph as one sample in advance, a foretaste, of the problems with the Levin report. So that is a document, a pretty lengthy document, headed with the words "Confidential. David Irving, biographical information"?

A. Yes.

Q. And that document, as we know from an affidavit by Mr Michael Whine of the Board of Deputies in this country, which his Lordship probably finds quicker than I do, was put, in fact, it was furnished to the Canadian government by this British body, would you accept that? It was furnished to the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Canada when they requested dirt on me to prevent me entering Canada?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Assume it.

A. I will assume it. I mean, I do find it very difficult to answer questions on other people's reports. The reason

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why there is a number of different expert witnesses for the Defence in this case is to assist the court in a number of different areas because no one person is competent to deal with them all.

Q. Did you recommend Professor Levin?

A. I have to say, I am not an expert on the Canadian government and ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Evans, can I explain to you (because you may not know this) the difficulty? Mr Irving is representing himself. I am, therefore, giving him what I hope is appropriate but quite a good degree of latitude. He is accused of various things, like racism and anti-Semitism. He has been cross-examined vigorously on that topic. The Defendants had experts who produced great long reports, as you know, dealing with those topics and the Defendants have decided not to call them. Mr Irving is, therefore, in the position of being the subject of the criticisms that they make of him, albeit no longer part of the Defendants' formal case, and he wishes to put one or two points to you as being somebody who is there to be shot at, as it were. I have decided that it is proper that he should do so. I think he may be spending rather long on it than I had hoped, but I am going to let him do that. So, for the purposes of this part of the cross-examination, will you assume that the Canadians got hold of this

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document in the way he suggests?

A. Indeed, yes, my Lord.

Q. I am sympathetic with your concern.

A. I hope you will accept that I do find it very difficult.

Q. I understand it, but you understand, I hope, why ----

A. Sure, yes.

Q. --- I am not going to stop these questions?

MR RAMPTON: I should add perhaps, my Lord, it is not quite true that we are not calling any such people. We are calling Professor Funke from Berlin.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I cannot remember now what he deals with.

MR RAMPTON: He deals with exactly for Germany with what Eatwell deals with for this country and Levin for the United States.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: But is he going to say when he comes, "Oh, well, I cannot deal with this sort of Canadian stuff because I am dealing with Germany".

MR RAMPTON: That, I do not know -- very likely.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is the problem.

MR RAMPTON: I am not in any sense trying to argue with what your Lordship just said. I just thought it necessary to add the gloss that, so far as anything to do with Germany is concerned, there will be a witness.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I had actually forgotten that, but thank you very much. But let us take this relatively briefly, but I am not stopping you.

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MR IRVING: Professor, is it correct that you recommended Professor Levin for this particular task?

A. No.

Q. You did not?

A. No.

Q. Are you familiar with Professor Levin at all?

A. No.

Q. If you read this paragraph, you will see that it says, he has extracted from my diaries which had been in front of him exactly as they had been in front of you, and in paragraph he says: "Irving's April 13th 1995 diary entry recounts his displeasure of having his name mentioned 'in the most disparaging terms in half a dozen places' along with supposed errors in an official Canadian government report"?

A. It says that, yes.

Q. He says that?

A. He does.

Q. Would it not have been correct for him to point out that, in fact, what I am objecting to is the fact that this is a British document that has been planted in Canadian government files by this body in England for whatever purpose?

A. I really cannot answer that, Mr Irving.

Q. He then continues to say: "On June 11th while in Key West, Irving states in his diaries that a fine for

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thousands of francs by a French court for his public statements was going to 'various greedy Jewish bodies'"?

A. He says that.

Q. He says that. In other words, I did write those words in my diaries?

A. He says that you did, yes.

Q. And if I were to tell that you the fine of 1,000 French francs, or whatever it was, thousands of French francs, was imposed on me for having an interview in my home in London with a French journalist in which I made a true statement, would that justify some kind of outburst in my diaries, do you think?

A. Well, there again you would have to show me the documents, you would have to show me the diary. I find it very difficult to comment on this single sentence in the report that I did not write and that I am not very familiar with.

Q. But he appears to have accurately quoted that I wrote in the diaries a reference to various greedy Jewish bodies, and he is obviously pointing to that as possibly an example of Anti-Semitism?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is a bit difficult, I think, for Professor Evans to deal with that unless he has a word perfect memory of what you wrote in your diaries.

A. Which I do not. I do not have all your 30 million words in my head.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think your best way of dealing with this,

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Mr Irving, is (if you want to) to deal with it as a matter of submission. You have all the documents.

MR IRVING: Can I deal with one more point, and then I will move away?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: All right.

MR IRVING: The final passage concerns the July 31 1995 diary recounting a letter that I sent to the Sunday Times -- I am sorry, to a major Sunday newspaper, is that correct?

A. Yes.

Q. And the newspaper concerned had stated that "Irving quoted by Griffin'", do you know a book by Griffin on fascism?

A. Yes.

Q. "'... Irving writes in the Mein Kampf idiom: "I combat Jewry not as a religion but as a race ... a solution to the Jewish problem must come".'"?

A. It looks here as if it is Griffin who writes in the Mein Kampf idiom. I presume that is a grammatical mistake.

Q. Yes, but, in fact, the actual article said that?

A. That is not the other, the other Griffin.

Q. Would you agree that this is an extremely loaded thing for me allegedly to have said, "I combat Jewry not as a religion but as a race ... a solution to the Jewish problem must come", but if I had written that, it would be perverse and unforgivable and I would deserve whatever came to me?

A. Can I just read you the next two sentences? "In his

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letter Irving denied ever making that statement".

Q. Yes?

A. "The Hitler chronicler remarkably stated, 'I have never read Mein Kampf".

Q. But, of course, I am called a denier, am I not, and my denials are not worth very much? That is what the whole of this case is about.

A. Where in this paragraph does he say that?

Q. The word "denial" figures very strongly in this case.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: What I get out of this is that on this particular point Professor Levin really does not make much of a case.

MR IRVING: I am taking one paragraph here, my Lord ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: He is quoting a statement that he attributes to you ----

MR IRVING: --- in which I am showing that sentence after sentence after sentence ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I follow the point.

MR IRVING: And the particular point I want to make on that, my Lord, as your Lordship is probably familiar, the major Sunday newspaper had to pay me a six figure sum in damages because of that particular allegation. There is no reference whatsoever to that in the ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I do not think much of that -- I mean, the point that Professor Levin makes there, I do not think much of it.

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MR IRVING: But the reason I am saying that, of course, is to give your Lordship a foretaste of what I would have said, had I been able to sink my teeth into Professor Levin when the time came.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I follow that, but I think perhaps the best time to do that is later on, not now.

MR IRVING: You worked for many years in Germany, is that correct, Professor? Five years in Germany?

A. On and off, yes, over the years. I have been going to Germany for shorter and extended periods since 1970.

Q. And you have worked a great deal in the German archives?

A. Yes.

Q. For your book on capital punishment?

A. And other books, yes.

Q. And you have worked a great deal in the Nazi archives, I mean the records of the Nazi period, the Third Reich?

A. Less so, but I have done work mainly in the Ministry of Justice files.

Q. Ministry of Justice files?

A. And in regional archives.

Q. Who was the Minister of Justice -- Gürtner?

A. Gürtner until 1941, yes.

Q. Until he died and then Schlegelberger took over?

A. Acting Minister, yes.

Q. Took over as acting Minister. Are you familiar at all, have you researched at all, on the files of the SS? The

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Himmler files, Schriftgutverwaltung of Himmler, and so on?

A. No. I am familiar with the Diensttagebuch, I have to say mainly for the purposes of this case.

Q. You had to read it, in other words, had to look into it?

A. I had to look at it, yes.

Q. You would recognize the Himmler documents if you saw them either in photocopy or in the original, would you? You would know what their layout was? This is what I am getting at. We have heard a certain amount of discussion in court about what -- do they all have a kind of standard layout and kind of address on the right and ----

A. That I could not say.

Q. Yes. Could not say. So your expertise then does not really extend into document analysis, shall I say, looking at the document and saying to yourself, how high up is this document, or who is it written by, or is it authentic even?

A. I think I have a general expertise in reading documents, yes, but I am not a specialist in the SS or its archive.

Q. Would I be right in saying that very rarely would one expect to come across a forged document either in the Bundesarchiv or in the British archives? Have you ever come across an instance where a document has had questionable integrity?

A. Those are two rather different things. I think that with a forged document you need to be very clear about why it

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is forged, who has forged it, and why, what the motives might have been and what kind of opportunity they had.

Q. My question was, have you ever come across a forged document in one of the western archives, in the United States or in Britain or in Germany?

A. Would you like to tell me what you mean by a "forged document".

Q. Well, a document that was clearly not written during the war years and has been inserted there for some ulterior purpose?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Not what it purports to be?

A. Not what it purports to be.

MR IRVING: Yes.

A. Not to my recollection, no.

Q. I have to say I have not either. Would you have the same expectations of Eastern European archives?

A. That is a very difficult question to answer. I have worked in East German archives, but one has to -- I mean, both in the Communist Socialist Unity Party archives and in the archives of East German Communist Ministries, but also, of course, as you know, the major German State archive, the Reich archive, was in East Germany for many years, and my impression of that and other State archives is that they were somewhat neglected. So I do not -- and that they were run by professional archivists. It is a rather different matter working in Party archives or as I

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did on one occasion in the East ----

Q. Did you ever work in the Moscow archives?

A. I have not worked in the Moscow archives.

Q. Have you ever worked in any other Eastern European archives?

A. No, just in East German archives.

Q. From your knowledge as an historian, do you know of instances where documents have been forged by Eastern European archives for Cold War purposes in order to sink a West German Minister or something like that?

A. Not from my direct knowledge of archival material, no.

Q. Are you familiar at all, have you read the newspapers about the Demjanjuk case, Ivan Demjanjuk?

A. I followed it as any other citizen, newspaper reader, did, yes.

Q. Would it be correct to say that at one stage he was incriminated on the basis of an identity card which later turned out to have been forged?

A. I am not an expert in this area, Mr Irving. I mean, I will accept for the purposes of argument that that was so.

Q. Have you suggested anywhere in your report that I have gained improper advantages because of my Nazi or neo-Nazi views from members of Hitler staff in obtaining records or papers that they would not have made available to other...

A. I do not think I -- I certainly did not use the word

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"improper".

Q. Well, that I had an edge on the others?

A. I may well have done so, yes, because that seems to me that in some way that you were more acceptable to the former members' widows and so on of Hitler's entourage than other historians were.

Q. Do you have any basis for that, apart from just envy?

A. I do not think I am envious of you, Mr Irving.

Q. But, I mean, the fact that I got hold of records that the historical establishment did not get must have aroused a certain amount of envy and acrimony?

A. Not in me.

Q. Not in you. You referred to it in this oblique way in your expert report -- I cannot put my finger on the actual passage -- you admitted or you stated that, yes, you had implied that I had benefited from my aura?

A. I am just trying to find the passages where I deal with this.

Q. Perhaps I can continue just by asking in general terms. You have read a lot transcripts of my interviews with Hitler's staff, the Adjutants, we call them, is that right?

A. That is right.

Q. And you may have heard tape recordings of some of them, because the tape recordings have all survived, 30 years ago?

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A. I have read the transcripts. I have not heard the tape recordings.

Q. Did you see any material in those transcripts to support the belief that I had benefited in some way from my aura as a neo-Nazi or as a fascist or whatever I am called?

A. What I actually say is ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page?

A. On page 604, paragraph 8, as you explain, "'I have interviewed scores of the principal German officers and personnel involved, including many of Hitler's close staff who have hitherto refused to talk to anybody, but who felt able to talk at length to me because of the nature of my previous books "The Destruction of Dresden" etc.'."

MR IRVING: Yes.

A. And I quote the Journal of Historical Review again, saying that "'numerous survivors of the Second World War era who are often mistrustful (often with good reason) of establishment historians' are willing to talk to you".

Q. Yes?

A. And another quote here from you: "'Once they'd won your confidence and they knew you weren't going to report them to the state prosecutor, they trusted you. And they thought, well, now at last they were doing their chief's'", that is Hitler, "'a service'."

Q. Yes.

A. That is you, is it not?

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Q. Is this in any sense improper, do you think?

A. I do not use the word "improper".

Q. Is it not a fact that by using this non-confrontational method of interviewing people you sometimes wheedle more out of them over the years than if one was to go there with all the methods of a Fleet Street journalist, cheating them the moment they had given the information and ridiculing them? That my method in the long term resulted in a much greater benefit for the historical community because I extracted the information, the data from them, is that not a fact, by using my methods?

A. Well, I do not know accept your rather harsh verdict on Fleet Street journalists and you would have to show me some examples of what they had done but ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not let us worry about that.

A. But, that aside ----

MR IRVING: The Swabians say sotte und sotte.

A. --- do not dispute, Mr Irving, that you have obtained a lot of information which other people have not obtained.

MR IRVING: Are you familiar with the collections of documents that I donated to the West German government and also to the Institute of History in Munich?

A. I know that you have donated collections of documents, yes, and I am familiar with some parts of them.

Q. And that historian around the world have frequently made use of these collections of documents?

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A. They have been used by other historians, indeed, yes.

Q. Would you agree that many of these documents are of high value?

A. They are of a variable value, but some are valuable, yes.

Q. The curate's egg, we used to say?

A. Yes, it is a mixed bag -- as any collection of documents.

Q. Yes. There are some very high grade private diaries of Hitler's private staff which nobody else has ever seen before?

A. Yes, and which you have published. I am not disputing any of this.

Q. In other words, people take with the one hand what they like about me, but with the other hand they are quite happy to ridicule me and smear me in public as a racist and Anti-Semite because they do not like the way I write my books?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is not really a question.

MR IRVING: Have you read the review that Professor Martin Broszat wrote of my book "Hitler's War" in the quarterly Journal of the Institute of Contemporary History?

A. Yes, I am familiar with it.

Q. It is a pretty corrosive review in parts, is it not?

A. Indeed.

Q. Are you familiar that there were personal reasons why Professor Martin Broszat would want to write corrosively about something I had written?

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A. I think that, well, not personally, but you claim that there are. I am familiar with your allegation that there are.

Q. If he married a lady ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, before we go on, I do not know what you are getting at.

MR IRVING: I am going to keep it very low profile, my Lord.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: What possible relevance has the malice of somebody who has reviewed one of your books got to the present case?

MR IRVING: Because the review written by Professor Martin Broszat is very heavily relied on by all the expert witnesses as evidence of my perversity and, for example, that is the origin of the Hitler's Table Talk distortion.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I can see the experts might share Professor Broszat's view of your historiography, but it is the expert's own opinion that accounts.

MR IRVING: You know how one little shout brings down the avalanche?

A. May I make two points there? One is that I have reinvestigated, as it were, reresearched, all the points made by Professor Broszat so that I am not reliant on what he says. The second point is I can direct you to my answer to your 11th question in the first set that you sent on 30th December.

Q. I have not read it.

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A. "If Broszat had personal motives for criticising Irving's work, these may help explain why he did so, but they do not of themselves invalidate the criticisms which have to be dealt with on their own terms".

Q. Are you aware of the fact that Professor Broszat refused to allow me any space to reply in that learned journal?

A. I will take your word for it that that was the case, though is it normal in that particular journal that ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Whether it is or it is not, I do not think we are going to stay long with Professor Broszat.

MR IRVING: Very well. Are you familiar with a document known as the Leuchter report, or have you heard of it?

A. Yes.

Q. Have you read it in any detail or are you familiar with ----

A. I have looked through it, yes. I am not an expert on Auschwitz, Mr Irving, but I have looked through it, yes.

Q. Are you familiar with the fact that other documents superseded the Leuchter report, both written by revisionists and by anti-revisionists, if I can put it like that? There were subsequent investigations.

A. Yes.

Q. Have you heard of the Rudolf report?

A. Yes.

Q. The report by Germar Rudolf.

A. I have heard of that, yes.

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Q. Did you refer to the Germar Rudolf report in any of your expert paragraphs?

A. To be honest, I am not quite sure. Certainly not in any detail. My report is not about Auschwitz.

Q. If I could be fairly criticised for having relied entirely on the Leuchter report, does it not take the sting out of a lot of that criticism, in your view, that subsequent reports which were also available to me did the Leuchter job but better, if I can put it like that?

A. I really cannot comment on that, Mr Irving. I thought this had been gone through in Professor van Pelt's report and in your cross-examination of him. My concern is not with Auschwitz. I am not an expert on these matters.

Q. The tactical reason I have for putting this to you is that my friends tell me that I have not hammered this into his Lordship's consciousness enough?

A. Well, to leave me out of it in that case if you are -- if you are doing the hammering, I will get out of the way in that particular one.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Forgive me. What has not penetrated my ----

MR IRVING: I am sure it has now, my Lord, because it is now in the transcript, purely that the Leuchter report was superseded by other reports on which I also relied in continuing to make the statements that I did.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I knew you relied on later reports, yes. That I had understood.

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MR IRVING: There is no harm in repetition, is there?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Within reason, no. Anyway, I just wanted to make sure I knew what you thought I had not understood.

MR IRVING: What do you think of Mr Kershaw as an historian on Adolf Hitler, Ian Kershaw, Professor Kershaw?

A. I think he is a good historian.

Q. A good historian? If I tell you that he declined to testify for us in my case here because his knowledge of German was totally insufficient, would that change your opinion of the books he writes about the leader of the Germans?

A. You would have to provide me with a copy of the document in which he says that before I could accept that that is what he said.

Q. You quote Robert Harris in the book "Selling Hitler" on paragraph 2.4.8 of your report?

A. Give me the page number, please.

MR IRVING: I do not have the page number in front of me.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: We had it just a moment ago, did we not? Was it 700 or 600 and something?

A. Much earlier, I think, my Lord.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: We can find it on the transcript.

MR IRVING: We have time, my Lord, because I have come to the end of my prepared questions on this topic and it may be your Lordship will not want me to ask questions about bundle E which is what I was proposing to do afterwards.

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MS ROGERS: 212.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: 212. Yes. I remember 212. Ask this and then we will consider bundle E.

MR IRVING: Paragraph 248. You quote Robert Harris in "Selling Hitler", "when the forensic tests shortly afterwards revealed the Hitler diaries definitively as fakes, Irving issued a statement accepting the finding but drawing attention to the fact that he had been the first person to unmask them as forged". Do you remember that passage?

A. Yes. It is not the one we have here.

Q. 2.4.8?

A. It is much earlier on, I think.

MS ROGERS: 39.

A. Yes.

MR IRVING: "Irving issued a statement accepting the forgery finding but drawing attention to the fact that he had been the first person to unmask them as forged. 'Yes', said a reporter from The Times" I am quoting from your report, "when this was read out to him, 'and the last person to declare them authentic'." Do you remember that passage?

A. Yes, I have got that, yes.

Q. Would it not have been more accurate to write that this was Robert Harris quoting me as saying that rather than me saying that?

A. Well, it is footnoted, Mr Irving. Footnote 26 refers to "Harris, Selling Hitler, page 359". So it is perfectly

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clear that it is Harris.

Q. But it is reported speech?

A. Indeed, it is in Harris's book. It is quite clear in my book that it is in Harris's book.

Q. Yes. Reverting to standards on anti-Semitism, what do you know about the statements made by leading politicians on the Jews during the war? Were they anti-Semitic in any degree, people like Winston Churchill or Anthony Eden or Lord Halifax? Are you familiar with any of the things that they said?

A. I am not, no.

Q. No. I just want to put to you a little clip of extracts that I made from some of their private diaries, and I do not propose to read these out.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you just help me ----

MR IRVING: It is headed: "Anti-Semitism in the diaries".

MR JUSTICE GRAY: --- as to their relevance?

MR IRVING: The relevance? It is arguable, my Lord. I was going to say on a scale of 1 to 10 is Lord Halifax mildly anti-Semitic if these ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, but what if he is? I mean, help me about that.

MR IRVING: Then the question I was going to say is on the scale of what you know from my private diaries, what number do I reach? 1, 0.5?

MR RAMPTON: I mean, the fact that these well-known people are,

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as I can plainly see, having looked at some of this stuff, guilty of the same kind of blatant anti-Semitism as Mr Irving takes us nowhere.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is a "so what?" point really?

MR RAMPTON: Yes, it is a "so what?" point with a big question mark.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That must be right, must it not, Mr Irving? I mean, the charge is made against you of anti-Semitism. That may or may not be justified. It may be partly justified, I do not know. That is something I have got to decide.

MR IRVING: But if I was told that I was only one-tenth as anti-Semitic as somebody as respectable as Anthony Eden, for example, or as Lord Halifax, then I would be able to sleep more peacefully at night, than when I read in the newspapers that I am the bogey man in the nursery.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I am afraid I take the view that we have to decide what anti-Semitism consists of, first of all, and then I have got to look and see what you have said and written and decide whether that constitutes anti-Semitism or is evidence of anti-Semitism.

MR IRVING: I tried to get an explanation from the witness as ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not helped by knowing what -- I mean, times have changed, apart from anything else.

MR IRVING: I wholeheartedly agree, my Lord. Times have

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definitely changed in this respect and they have changed for the better.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I must judge you by the standards of perhaps not 2000, but the standards at the times when you made the remarks you did make which is usually in the 80s and 90s.

MR IRVING: But we have a problem here. I have tried to extract from the witness a definition of his criteria for the anti-Semitism that he accuses me of.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Perfectly proper.

MR IRVING: And we have received only waffle, if I may put it like that.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, you can say that later, but do not say it now. It is unhelpful.

MR IRVING: And I have tried to ask for what specific instances of anti-Semitism he has found in my private diaries which, surely, are the closest to my state of mind, and we have found five words, I think.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: He said it has not really been his pigeon. He is here for other matters. You do not have to accept that answer, but it is his evidence.

MR IRVING: But the charge is levelled, my Lord, at me by this witness and by the others and it is a charge that people very happily make. I say that the charge of anti-Semitism is the last resort of the scoundrel, very frequently, and it is one that sticks, rather like being called a Holocaust denier.

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MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I do not seek to dispute that at this stage, but what we are on at the moment, Mr Irving, is whether you are entitled to adduce effectively in evidence, through the cross-examination of Professor Evans, alleged anti-Semitism on the part of Lord Halifax and Winston Churchill, and I think that is wholly impermissible.

MR IRVING: Impermissible, very well. Can I at least then adduce evidence that the First Defendant has published books which contain grossly anti-Semitic passages?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not admit -- why do you say that is relevant?

MR IRVING: Biblical passage.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is a sort of pot calling the kettle black.

MR IRVING: Casting the mote out of their own eye first and referring it to John Buchan's '39 Steps', for example. I am sure your Lordship is familiar with them. They are the most appalling passages.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are clutching at a bit of a straw there, are you not? When was that published?

MR IRVING: Not recently, but John Buchan became Governor General of Canada.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am trying to give you a lot of latitude, Mr Irving. I think I am perhaps beginning to give you too much. I really just do not think you can just start going into alleged anti-Semitism on the part of other people, or

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other companies.

MR IRVING: The Defendants in this case have published books which are anti-Semitic in my submission and yet -- I will merely ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let me hear Mr Rampton on that because ----

MR RAMPTON: My Lord, this is a kind of insanity. I feel as though I was in one of Lewis Carroll's book. Mr Irving brought this action in respect of words published by my clients. The only defence is that what is said is true, amongst them that Mr Irving is an anti-Semitic. What can it matter that there may have been some author from the distant past, the 39 Steps, who also, on some occasion, might have made a remark as an anti-Semite?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I wholly agree about John Buchan in the 1930s, or whenever it was.

MR RAMPTON: Suppose my client has published the works of an anti-Semite yesterday. How could it bear upon the question of whether or not Mr Irving is an anti-Semite, save to the extent that I then stood up and said: "Well that Penguin book is not anti-Semitic"?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that is right. I am trying to give Mr Irving the benefit of the doubt, but Mr Irving, I cannot let this thing ----

MR IRVING: My Lord, we bought a copy of this book published by Penguin Books two days ago at Books Et Cetera.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: If your odds are still on John Buchan, then

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that is really absolutely, if I may say so, hopeless as a point, hopeless.

MR IRVING: Should political correctness not have required them to at least excise these horrendous passages from that book?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. Mr Irving, I am afraid we are going to have to move on. I am against you on this.

MR IRVING: Are you familiar with the Holocaust, Professor Evans? Are you familiar with the bibliography on Holocaust Denial which has been prepared by a specialist in this matter, New York City University John Drobniski, I think?

A. I have to say not very, no.

Q. Are you aware that there is such a bibliography?

A. Yes.

Q. It is a bibliography that is available on the Internet, would you accept that?

A. Yes, it is.

Q. It has gone through several editions?

A. Yes.

Q. And this bibliography -- is it called Holocaust Denial Literature -- is a bibliography?

A. I think that is true, yes, to my recollection.

Q. Is it compiled by John A Drobniski, D-R-O-B-N-I-S-K-I, in conjunction with Carol Goldman and two or three others?

A. I think that is right, but I have to say I am not very

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familiar with this bibliography.

Q. If I tell you, therefore, that my name does not figure in this entire bibliography as having published a Holocaust Denial work, would this surprise you in the view of the expert report that you have written? Is that a proper question, my Lord?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

A. Well, I did not compile the bibliography. I am not an