Letters to David Irving on this Website

Unless correspondents ask us not to, this Website will post selected letters that it receives, and invite open debate.

Richard Santana believes, Thursday, October 14, 2004, that Mr Irving wanted to make a killing from the Lipstadt trial

Getting rich at others' expense

Re: It's all about money Sinai tourists shakedown Hilton chain 

SINAI -- let's see -- where did the people suing the hotel get the idea from?

I mean, people with bleak economic prospects using a flimsy excuse to try to steal the economic resources of others. Maybe you would care to offer Professor Deborah Lipstadt and/or Penguin Books Ltd the opportunity to comment . . . or am I being overly cynical?

Richard Santana

Our dossier on the Lipstadt trial

David Irving comments

NOT sure what point you are making, Richard, unless you are thinking, in your confusion, that by suing them for libel I was trying to enrich myself at the expense of Lipstadt and the richest publishing firm on earth, Penguin Books (aka Pearson International). Lipstadt has certainly gone around the world whining that I was suing her for immense damages for her libels.

In fact precisely to avoid that allegation you will find that I did not ask for damages for myself; in my offer to both defendants I said I would withdraw the action if they paid a modest sum -- £500 (roughly $800) -- to a charity for the limbless, in memory of my oldest daughter; and at the end of my closing address to the court in March 2000 I stated that I would not even be asking for my legal costs.

It was a matter of principle. Penguin Books wanted to settle on these terms, but the solicitors for Lipstadt threatened them with legal action if they did not stay the course: they ended up some six million dollars out of pocket in consequence. It should be taken as a lesson by others not to tangle with me.