FOR THIRTY-FIVE years author David Irving has kept a private diary. It has proven useful in countless actions. For the information of his many supporters he publishes an edited text in his irregular newsletter ACTION REPORT.

pril 1999
London

Hectic day of filing and boxing ready for tomorrow's big new journey. I send Tessa home early at one p.m., being a good employer -- but not before she has spotted that the air tickets have us flying out of San Francisco to Seattle, not from Los Angeles; United Airlines refuse to amend it, tho' it's the agency's fault.

We arrive at Los Angeles at 2:30 p.m. Thanks to this ticket foul-up I cannot rent a Lincoln. To the Atrium at five p.m.; gradually the room fills to bursting, with around 200 people. I speak for an hour on Churchill and de Gaulle.

Over to San Dimas in mounting drizzle, getting lost on the freeways; then off to the Fairplex exhibition grounds for the militaria show. Horrid arena, vast spaces, long lines of people, finally setting up at four p.m. Stay until seven, $300 sales. Not worth the effort.

I am still awaiting a response to my complaint to the Office for the Supervision of Solicitors. Out of the blue I receive an e-mail from a Tony H., a stranger surfing the Internet for the low-down on Mishcon de Reya, as they broke a formal undertaking to his firm too, with very serious consequences:

In 1996 [he writes] Mishcon de Reya represented our company in a commercial transaction. Due to a dispute with new investors into our company, Mishcon de Reya served an injunction on us as directors and also on our company. It was a wasteful litigation that lasted two years. We as directors won our case in Feb 1998.

A legal expert tells me that for a firm of Mishcon's eminence to be guilty of three separate breaches of Law Society rules is the most serious situation that such a firm could ever hope to face. The complaining firm has lodged a substantial claim with Mishcon's insurers in respect of losses incurred through their conduct. "If you find the above to be of any interest," writes H., "please let me know."

Off northward up Route 101. Television news reveals that back in Britain the alleged Brixton Bomber has been caught. He is named David Copeland. Very interesting. The police announce at once that there is no question of any rightwing links. Methinks my reward is safe.

E-mail from Bjorn H. in Norway:

The "documentary" "Journey to the Far Right" was sent on the Norwegian state owned television channel NRK one (audience usually 800,000 - 1,000,000) yesterday May 1 between 21:35 - 22:00.

This e-mail goes to Benté from Ellensburg, Washington state, where I am to speak to students of Central Washington University:

Bitterly cold here and I have only shirts. No jacket or pullover. I hope to see H. in Seattle tonight. Beautiful landscape and scenery here, fantastic drive over snow-packed mountains yesterday to here.

A fine meeting. I feared the hall was too large and too many chairs put out, but every chair is occupied, and 200 students or more pack in, with many teachers to hear my lecture.

Tessa alas is too scared to take photographs of this huge and literate throng. D. took some however. Only one hostile questioner, although students or strangers have been handing out the usual "Coalition for Human Dignity" smear sheets all week on the campus. The hostile stranger -- too mature to be a student -- challenges me about the "Ku Klux Klansmen" and other people he or others have, he said, espied handling "security" at my Portland and other functions several years ago. I make mockery of him, and ask the not impertinent question: "Why should it be necessary for me to have 'security' at my lectures?"

He arouses little sympathy from the audience. Some very intelligent questions are asked, and some good looking students are rewarded with large Hitler's War posters: I point out that (a) they can annoy the pants off their parents with them, and (b) nobody can paint Hitler moustaches on them, as he already has one.

I send this e-mail to Bente:

Has Jessica still not cracked the code messages I sent her?

We leave Ellensburg at 4:40 p.m., with T. driving; I fall fast asleep for an hour. We drive straight to the hotel at Seattle airport, though through blizzards as we cross the mountains.

H. and his wife arrive around ten p.m. I have supper with them and a long talk. H. is looking as fit as a fiddle, though his eyes are sunken and his skin slightly sallow. He is taking a Chinese herbal remedy which certainly appears to have aided him. I am so pleased. He says, "The cancer is now all over my body." It does not show.

Breakfast and another long talk with him, plagued by a female at the next table who yells into her cellphone for over an hour. What a plague on civilisation. E-mails come from students who were at the talk yesterday, very flattering. How nice.

In the evening we drive up to North Seattle, for the function in the Old Country restaurant. Very successful, over seventy people packed into a room for 44, including many old friends.

E-mail from Jessica, solving the puzzle, to which I reply:

I am at Seattle which is a town on the other side of America. . . Lots of people in America already know about you and ask about you. I tell them that you are as clever as your Mummy.

Arrive at Portland around six p.m. and check into conference room for tonight's talk. After I finish loading the boxes into van afterwards the hotel staff refuse to give me keys to my suite, as it is not booked in my name; I do not know the name of the man who booked it for us. I settle down in the freezing parking lot for four hours.

Unable to get into the suite until two a.m., when they admit their error. Leave around midday for Grant's Pass.

This e-mail goes to Benté.

I have stopped for the night in a little wooden motel in the heart of the Giant Redwood forests, heading south from Eureka to San Francisco. What an inspiring drive! The manager, a woman from Manchester, recognised me at once: "David, isn't it?" -- I stopped at the same place last year, heading north.

Make sure Jessica solves the puzzle.

Jessica e-mails me the answer to the backward-words puzzle ("I am looking forward to coming home and seeing you and Mummy, lots of love, Daddy.").

I reply:

There is a six year old girl at this hotel and she is very clever, but I do not think that she is as clever as Jessica.

I did not think that you would be able to solve that puzzle. I am sure that mummy is not able to do it! Now I will have to think of an even more difficult puzzle for you to solve!

Seven p.m. up to Los Gatos, and we arrive at R.'s after the usual nervewracking drive along precipices. His new Russian-born wife looks better than in the pics. I try out my Russian on her. She has brought over the most hideous pitbull terrier, with eye problems, and it follows them around all day like the ghost of the Soviet Union.

Key West at last. Up at 8:30 a.m. E-mail from Jessica: "Dear Daddy I forgot to tell you that I want a Happening Hair Barbie as well ."

I reply:

I called in at the computer shop in Miami yesterday morning before I drive down here in the motor car, and I looked at all their games and I found one called The Lion King Activity Centre, which has a lot of Lion King games, puzzles and printing things to do.

I will have a look for Happening Hair Barbie here in the shops in Key West. I am also sending to you a book of pictures of the beautiful forests of trees that I saw here in America. I was at the beach yesterday where you first learned to walk.

A letter comes from a school teacher:

I am a history teacher doing some preliminary research on behalf of one of my A-level students (our school is not yet "wired", so I am conducting this from my own Internet connection at home).

She is planning on conducting a Personal Study on the historiography of Hitler's involvement in the Holocaust. I have examined your extensive site but have failed to find the following:

• What, in a nutshell, is your view of what the Holocaust is, and how many Jews died, and how?
• What, in a nutshell, is your view of Hitler's involvement in the Holocaust?

I realise that these questions are probably answered somewhere in your site, but I confess I failed to find them! I have found the views of your opponents, but not those of you yourself.

I would not expect a detailed reply from you: any relevant URLs would be much appreciated. -- Yours, Paul Harrison

I reply, amending my standard letter:

Since you have asked clear questions, I will be happy to correspond in greater detail; but for the reasons stated above please first identify to me your school and its telephone number, in case I wish briefly to verify your bonafides! Sorry to sound suspicious, but. . .

Supper in the evening with Sam and Jane at Bubbaloos. -- An anonymous e-mail correspondent has sent to me the file on which a disgruntled British secret service agent has released the names and resumes of over a hundred British secret service agents. I scan it briefly: none is among my friends, I am glad to see.

Although most of the names are probably long known to whatever enemies Britain might have, I still think the man is a cad, and I have no intention of copying his action.

I receive this disapproving message about our Website's humorous "Charles Darwin Award" last week:

I read this [he writes], and thought of the families and their grief. I recently lost a 16 year-old son and know the pain of losing a child. The mother who reported her 23 year old daughter missing would be shocked to know that her daughter's death is being used as a joke on a web page by a famous and respected historian. With all due respect, I found it sad -- not funny.

I am sorry that he is offended by the story. I must say precisely the same thoughts ran through my mind, as a father.

Every family has its share of woes [I reply to him]. My oldest daughter is alas ill and has lost her legs in an accident. She is one of my five favourites nonetheless (I have five daughters, all equal in my eyes.) She has had this affliction since 1980: a very brave girl.

Benté e-mails:

Forgot to tell you that some old German dictionaries arrived, if that is of any interest.

Yes indeed, they are needed for the trials. Interesting letter from Don Guttenplan, of Hampstead, who is writing about the Lipstadt case for The New York Times. I decide to help, if he is genuine, which he must first prove to me.

Up at seven a.m. Guttenplan replies by e-mail:

Given your perfectly understandable caution, I have asked my editor at the Times to send you a fax confirming this.

I reply:

If you contact my staff (Bente) in London they will give you access to my well ordered clippings files, which include masses of reviews including the Sept. 16, 1996 review of Goebbels. Mastermind of the Third Reich by Prof. Gordon Craig in the New York Review of Books to which you refer. While you are welcome to look, while at that address, at any of my Discovery, we cannot show you the defendants' Discovery yet, which includes a number of interesting items establishing what I shall claim is an international conspiracy by a number of (alas) Jewish organisations to defame me and "destroy my legitimacy as an historian," as one of their documents admits.

Almost at once the NYT fax comes, and I send him another e-mail:

As a starting point: you will notice that although a litigant in person, which is a more fearsome beast in the English courts than in the American, I have largely prevailed in the interlocutory actions.

The most recent, in which I tried to get Prof. Lipstadt's defence struck out because her solicitors had concealed important video evidence, will interest you. You will have correctly surmised that I and my staff are working to produce an informative Website for the general public for when the trial begins.

I cannot count on the newspapers to report fairly, or in full. Incidentally, her solicitors are a most charming and urbane group of people. At the first hearing, over a year ago they clustered frigidly outside the courtroom door and refused to shake hands.

I rather fancy that now that they have delved into my entire private papers, including 59 volumes of my private diaries, they find that I am anything but the monster depicted by those who pushed Lipstadt into libelling me.

A rather sharp new Internet surfer contacts me.

You do not appear to acknowledge that the Holocaust occurred with the full knowledge and acceptance of the majority of the German people.

I reply:

. . . having read extensively in the files of (a) intercepted German code communications (b) intercepted German mail sacks (c) captured private diaries of German soldiers and others (d) Gestapo morale reports on civilians, there is no proof whatsoever that the average German was aware of what was going on -- whatever it was.

Mishcon are demanding a copy of the London university rag magazine Carnival Times, which I edited in 1959.

I reply:

It is forty years (and one month) since I last looked at this satirical university magazine, Carnival Times, and I am dubious that the Court will agree with you that it is relevant to the issues pleaded.

We have in our files one issue in a very fragile condition. Your firm have not shown much respect for treating original documents carefully. We will undertake to provide to your clients a clear photocopy of the entire magazine, and to have the original in Court. I should add that not all the articles were written by myself. . .

Up at 7:50 a.m. after a restless night, overshadowed by worry for poor Benté.

E mail from Don Guttenplan:

If the Holocaust is, as you said in your e-mail to me, not your patch, why bother to read the Van Pelt [book: Auschwitz from 1270 to the Present]. And on what grounds do you dismiss Dwork (since this is her patch)?

I reply:

Since I apprehend that it is very likely that Prof. Van Pelt will surface in seven days' time as one of Prof. Lipstadt's expert witnesses, and yours are probably the kind of questions that will arise in Court, I am not going to answer them substantively at this stage. I expect however that Van Pelt's book, which is a deservedly widely sold book, has been bought by thousands of readers for whom the holocaust is not within their patch, and you can count me among those.

Dwork disqualifies herself by her uncritical use of sources (assuming I have correctly identified which parts she wrote, and that is not difficult).

The NY Times journalist persists:

But you still haven't told me (I'm afraid my masters at the Times are insistent) how you would describe "your patch".

This is my answer:

Steve Spender described me as "a British historian, David Irving, perhaps the greatest living authority on the Nazi era," The New York Times review of books, March 1977. I am content with that generic description.

The Times in London on March 14, 1971 already wrote "David Irving takes his place in the first rank of historical chroniclers".

I would describe myself in those terms, were I immodest; I would add that I regard myself principally as a biographer of top Nazis (and others). Clearly, the holocaust is only a corner of that patch.

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