 David Irving comments: AS for the much-praised
scholar Richard "Skunky" Evans, we hope
that his knowledge of colloquial German has
improved since he gave (or rather sold) his
expert evidence in the Lipstadt trial, and that
he has memorised the names and positions of at
least some of the top Nazis (Albert Speer
springs to mind).
His much-vilified three-volume
history of the Third Reich has an interesting
history: besides paying him half a million
pounds to give his unbiased and objective views
about me in the trial of DJC Irving vs.
Penguin Books Ltd and Lipstadt, Penguin
Books secretly negotiated a one million pound
contract for this turgid opus; this interesting
fact was not disclosed to the High Court -- the
views of the judge, Sir Charles Gray, who
later called the payments made to the expert
witnesses "obscene", would have been interesting
to hear.
The Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung, reviewing
this Evans opus, titled its review, "Kein
feines Ohr Richard Evans hebt zu einem
dreibändigen Werk über das Dritte
Reich" -- they deemed the first volume of his
Trilogy boring, needlessly elaborate, and
insensitive ("weil das Wesen der Geschichte
nun einmal die Nuance ist, in Evans'
voluminöser, von viel
überflüssiger Ausführlichkeit
begleiteter Darstellung zuweilen einfach
vermißt.")  I guess Evans will prefer
to stick with the opinions of his Jewish friends
and -- in the Lipstadt
trial -- paymasters.
I wrote in an earlier piece of
the Faustian pledge this left-wing Cambridge
history professor had signed when they paid him
up to half a million pounds (plus hidden
bonuses) for his "expert evidence" against me;
he is now lumbered with these unlikeable friends
for the rest of his life.  |
The Prime
Minister has a humdinger of an appointment to make: a
professor of history at Cambridge
Knock-knocking on
Evans' door?
by Tristram Hunt
AS Gordon Brown [British
prime minister] is no doubt discovering, the
day-to-day powers of a prime minister are limited. In
contrast to HM Treasury, No10 is a small town house with
neither a vast departmental budget nor a legion of civil
servants. But what the denizen of Downing Street still
controls is the power of patronage -- and sitting in Mr
Brown's in-tray is a humdinger of an appointment, the
Regius Professorship of Modern History at the University
of Cambridge.
Much has been made of Gordon Brown's status as
Britain's first with a history PhD. The recently launched
History & Policy think-tank, composed of academics
trying to interest politicians in studying the lessons of
the past, has placed great hopes in a more reflective
Brown Government after the Year Zero mentality of the
Blair years.
And there is no doubt Mr Brown enjoys debating and
studying the past: his book on Jimmy Maxton and
"Red Clydeside" is regarded as a sophisticated if rather
dry account of Scottish socialism; his speeches on
Britishness and liberty are inflected with a historical
tradition influenced by 17th-century civic republicanism;
and he has developed a History Channel-like enthusiasm
for the derring-do of the Second World War, with a
planned new volume of his Profiles in Courage to
be drawn from heroic wartime accounts. But Mr Brown now
has a wonderful chance to send a powerful signal about
the kind of history he thinks is important to
21st-century Britain. The Regius Professorship of History
is a glorious post stretching back to the 18th century
and its ranks have variously included the great
chronicler of liberty Lord Acton, the social historian
G.M.Trevelyan, and the Tudor expert Sir
Geoffrey Elton. Its current holder, Quentin
Skinner, a professor of political thought, retires
later this year and discreet soundings are being taken at
High Table for a replacement.
Favourite
for the job is the brilliant
if belligerent scholar of
Nazi Germany, Richard
Evans (right). Presently engaged in
writing a massive, multi-volume account of the Reich, his
other claim to fame is a comprehensive demolition of
David Irving in his Holocaust-denier
libel case. In a High Court tour de force, Professor
Evans took him to task over mistranslated documents, the
use of discredited testimony and falsified historical
statistics. "Irving has fallen so far short of the
standards of scholarship customary among historians,"
Evans concluded, "that he does not deserve to be called a
historian at all." His appointment would confirm Mr
Brown's enthusiasm for the centrality of the Second World
War to our national story.
Running him a close second is the imperial and naval
historian Sir Christopher Bayly. A South Asian
enthusiast and 18th-century expert, Sir Christopher has
been a pioneer in the history of globalisation. As
politicians grapple with all the problems of mass
migration, multiculturalism and post-imperial identities,
his work has sought to unpick the roots of these modern
complexities in the mid-1700s. His is a fascinating
chronicle of interdependence, cultural exchange and
global networks, powerfully relevant for present day
policymakers.
Then there is the outfield. We will know that the PM
has fallen victim to the securocrats if Christopher
Andrew is offered the job. The official chronicler of
MI5, his studies have unearthed many dirty secrets of the
former Soviet Union -- including the exposure of
Melita Norwood, the "great-granny spy", as the
longest-serving Russian agent in Britain. By contrast, Mr
Brown could burnish his progressive credentials by
promoting the radicals' choice, Gareth Stedman
Jones, a former "new Left" guru and pioneer social
historian, and now working on a definitive biography of
Marx.
Mr Brown, however, could have his own ideas. Among the
historians who have most influenced his thinking is the
Princeton-based academic, Linda Colley. Her book,
Britons: Forging the Nation, described how British
national identity was moulded in the 18th century in the
furnace of war, empire and Protestantism. While some
concluded from her work that if Britishness was an
artificial 1700s construct then it could just as easily
be abandoned in an era of post-national ethnic
affiliations, Mr Brown has used her history to argue for
a new assertion of British identity for a modern age.
Like few others, Professor Colley's work has informed his
entire approach to Britishness and citizenship and she
would be an impressive appointment.
Then there is the nuclear option: Gertrude
Himmelfarb. Wife of the Trotskyist turned
neoconservative guru Irving Kristol, this great
doyenne of reactionary history has somehow inveigled the
Prime Minister under her spell. Her specialism is
Victorian attitudes to poverty and she herself has long
adopted the lofty mien of a lady bountiful: for Professor
Himmelfarb, the problems of the poor are always questions
of morality and character, not class or condition. No
doubt this appeals to Mr Brown's Puritan ethos just as
her championing of the British enlightenment above the
continental version tickles his Euroscepticism. Yet she
is a New Yorker born and bred and, at her impressive age,
will not be swapping Central Park for the Cambridge
fens.
Whoever [sic] he chooses, Mr Brown
should get stuck in [sic]. One of the more
misguided reforms under consideration is removing Downing
Street from public appointments. But when it comes to
bishops and dons, a little bit of politics helps: it
makes academia more relevant, and politicians more
reflective. It does well for prime ministers to take an
interest in their professors -- for unless, like
Churchill, they write their own histories, these
will be the scribes handing down the judgment of
posterity.
Tristram Hunt lectures in history at Queen Mary,
University of London: See his blogs [1]
and [2]
We
hope that his knowledge of colloquial German has improved
since he gave (or rather sold) his expert evidence in the
Lipstadt trial, and that he has memorised the names and
positions of at least some of the top
Nazis.
write to David Irving