Documents on the Fight for Real History

David Irving

[Photo by Michael Hentz, for
The New York Times]

Letter to the Editor
The Sunday Telegraph

[Not published]

The Editor,
The Sunday Telegraph,
Fleet Street,
London EC4

London, January 10, 1992

Sir,
IT SEEMS that my book Hitler's War, with its sumptuous colour photos, has again set the cat among the pigeons. You will recall that I personally delivered several thousand copies to five hundred bookstores from Inverness to Penzance before Christmas; on January 22 I shall set out--preceded by a ton of the books--to South Africa to continue the sales drive. Now it appears we are up against the kind of small-minded censorship about which you have already published one item--censorship in both usual and unusual forms.

  1. A journalist, Mr Adam Smallman of Southsea (0705-294 635), phoned me just now: the "local community" is indignant to find the book in W H Smith Ltd bookshops all along the south coast, and how could I justify it?

  2. W H Smith Ltd of Worthing, which has invited me to a signing session on January 18, have today cancelled this on order from Head Office (see their letter).

  3. W H Smith's Head Office, chief book buyer, Madelaine (sic) Smith (0793-616161 ext. 2195) phoned this morning, forbidding us to direct-sell this book into her branches, even though local managers, having seen it, ordered large quantities for their shelves. Coincidence, or has W H Smith been got at? [1]

  4. Perhaps most intriguing of all--in shops I visit I have been puzzled to find the book tucked out of sight the wrong way round on bottom shelves.

Last night a dinner guest here told me he was in Waterstone's, Hampstead, two days ago and saw somebody furtively entering the shop, taking the book of its prominent shelf, and hiding it at the bottom. Who are these fiends? And are they already buying their tickets for South Africa, I wonder.

Yours faithfully,
David Irving

Further notes:
  1. They had. This was the first sign of the clandestine campaign by the Board of Deputies of British Jews to stifle the publication and sale of Mr Irving's works in English bookstores

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