Professor
Richard
Evans:
"Arrogant?"
Letters
Letters
- David Irving: the sequel
I RETURNED from holiday to read
D
D Guttenplan's review of
Telling Lies about Hitler, my
book on the David Irving libel trial
(Books,
22 July). Guttenplan makes
gratuitously offensive personal
comments and unfounded allegations.
He says I have an 'unsympathetic
personality' and suffer from
'arrogance' and 'vanity'. Could this
have something to do with my critical
review
of his own book on the trial? He
revealed his feelings the last time we
met: 'You f*cked me in print'.
David Irving
comments: AS the Battleship Auschwitz
slowly sinks beneath the
surface of the sea of History,
thanks to the efforts of real
men of conscience like
Fritjof
Meyer, fighting,
bickering, and backstabbing
have broken out among its
officers.
As expected.
At present they are fighting
over the loot in its hold --
the royalties from the books
these greedy gentlemen have
rushed into print. Later, the
loot will be taken from
them.
The only
book worth reading on the
Lipstadt trial (funny how they
all chant in unison that it
was the "Irving" trial) was
the one by Don
Guttenplan. Lipstadt's own
long-awaited book may of
course prove to be a
masterpiece of literary
endeavour eclipsing them all
(but, uh, I doubt it).
Meanwhile,
two thumbs-up to Guttenplan's.
Evans says, "Irving has said
he has no objection to it".
Not so: I emphatically
endorse it as being the
only one unsullied by cant and
prejudice, notwithstanding the
fact that G. is Jewish, and E.
is not.  |
Guttenplan claims that I don't know
very much about the Holocaust. He cites
Raul
Hilberg's estimate of Jewish
victims of Nazism as 5.1 million, but
that was made a long time ago, and
discoveries in eastern Europe since
1990 have pushed the figure steadily
upwards. He says, absurdly, that I
think Holocaust deniers are
postmodernists; I have never made such
a ridiculous claim. He accuses me of
overstating my own originality. But I
pointed out that Irving was
rumbled by Hugh Trevor-Roper, Gitta
Sereny and others in the 1970s.
Their discoveries, however, related to
only a very small part of his work and
Irving has written much, much more
since then. It is offensive of
Guttenplan to suggest that the 18
months of hard slog I put in with my
research assistants failed to find
anything new.
I
never claimed, as Guttenplan asserts,
that his book on the trial was soft on
Irving. However, Irving has said he has
no objection to it. Nor do I, as he
supposes, arrogantly look down on
journalists, at least not where they
check their facts rather than
dismissing those who do as
'pedants'.
Worst of all, Guttenplan joins the
continuing campaign of personal
vilification against me launched by
Granta because I had the temerity to
suggest that their last-minute decision
not to publish my book might have had
something to do with Irving's repeated
threats of legal action. It was not I
who was 'lacking in candour' about my
doubts in signing a four-book deal with
Granta. It was Granta's managing
director, who assured me in the
strongest possible terms that the
company was committed to publishing
Telling Lies whether or not I
signed the other contracts. And I did
not, as Guttenplan alleges, excise
criticisms of Penguin from Telling
Lies after that publisher had
agreed to take a new book of mine. I
had already excised them, because I had
been advised to do so by my editor at
Granta!
What we should all be doing is
making common cause against England's
iniquitous libel laws, which allow
people like Irving to restrict freedom
of speech by threatening defendants
with huge and irrecoverable legal costs
even where their writ stands no chance
of success.
Richard
J Evans
Professor of modern
history
University of Cambridge
write to David
Irving