PART 3  E
LOAD UP and set out at about 10:30 a.m., and leave
for California, driving all day until 8:30 p.m., a
five-hundred mile journey. For me however life goes
on even after I halt for the night: paperwork,
writing, and preparations for more. The local
restaurant closes at 9 p.m. just as I get there.
Supper off a packet of corn chips, and a cup of tea
therefore. I work until three a.m. on the
Website.
Getting tired. I
have difficulty today remembering the last two
digits of my own phone number! Drive on south, down
to Stanford where I spend a happy hour in the
Macintosh shop, and buy more manuals.
Perfectionist, moi! Brief supper at
Fisherman's Wharf, then resume the long drive south
at nine p.m. From closing
file-times recorded on my computer, it seems I
worked until 4:30 a.m. I go on line and find some
interesting mail
from the BBC,
who have [certain] plans. I'll
fit in with your plans. You can reach me by
e-mail ... I am in the USA: West Coast today,
Denver tomorrow, East Coast from
Thursday. On an
afterthought I then add: Please
bear in mind that no travel arrangements made
for Poland can involve stop overs by me on
German territory. Unless BBCtv wishes to support
Benté and my child for the next five or
six years! Then off again.
I phone C-Span, but R. is not at her desk. Another
long day's drive, down US. 101, facing an endless
high-speed cataract of dazzling headlights and
brake-lights. Most nerve-racking. Check into a
hotel at Costa Mesa [south of Los
Angeles] at eleven p.m. Then three
hours' work repacking the boxes for tomorrow's
onward Odyssey across the United States. Bed around
two a.m. Must get sleep! Set off for
airport at eleven a.m. Flight leaves at 1:25 p.m.,
arrive at Denver at 4:30 p.m. local time. Drive to
my favourite little bookstore in Littleton. About
thirty or forty people come. Early start tomorrow
for Atlanta; flight leaves at 10:25 a.m. Here we
find an excellent, all-male dinner. It is the
people who are the fun. Stay up talking with them
until one a.m., then work on the Website until 3:30
a.m. United Airlines
flight to Washington 4:30 p.m. One and a half hours
standing in line at the Hertz office to rent the
Ford Taurus car. Very heavy traffic jams all the
way into the capital along I-66, and through
Georgetown. At the Cosmos Club, A. has left a
message: C-Span will televise my lunchtime talk
tomorrow. Work until three
a.m. Up at 8:30 a.m. (after the clock radio starts
with a shout at 5:30 a.m. and again after ten
minutes, after I hit its stop switch in the
dark). At twelve midday
at Polo India club. C-Span television crew already
there, setting up. Good function, excellent speech
for the cameras, though inhibited, and good
questions. Work until three a.m. again.
Umph. A. talks to me
at length about Gregory Douglas, admits that
Douglas and Peter Birch are one and the
same, as Douglas himself says. As police records
show, this identifies Douglas also as Peter
Stahl. He says Douglas is now sixty-six (which
fits the man I knew as Stahl), and lives currently
in Freeport, Illinois. Stahl is said to be helping
(!) the Swiss authorities in their fight against
the Bronfman suits, providing them with
documents. Oi! Douglas is also associated with the
Hitler Diaries forger, Konrad Kujau. Small
world indeed. All my protests to A. that he should
have nothing to do with the man evince nothing.
Surely there is some element of truth in the files,
he suggests? I say: Stahl/Douglas has shown nobody
anything original, whatever, whenever. No films, no
documents. Just promises upon promises for decades.
A true thief and forger. Set out for New
York at three p.m., in gradually mounting downpour.
Three hundred mile drive up to New Jersey, arrived
at the -- Hotel at 9:50 p.m. A day's rest here. And
more work. We set off back
south at 12:30 a.m.; we arrive at Arlington,
Virginia, at 6:30 p.m. Good audience, not a seat to
spare at the dinner (Nikolaides Club), including an
Australian nonagenarian who last saw me at
Melbourne and now enters behind me in a wheelchair
with her minder, making much clatter. Have to
restart my talk three times. The Idi Amin
medal saves me. Very weary, we
set out back to New Jersey at 10:30 p.m. I drive
the whole way. Gas tank "empty" warning lamp is
blinking as we arrived back at 3:33 a.m., three
minutes after my projected arrival. I send this fax
to a bookseller friend: C-Span
had two people (a crew) tape the whole of
Sunday's event, which went very well. The meat
of the talk was Free Speech and its enemies.
They might not like that however. I think it
50/50 that they will air the tape.2. Be
cautious about --. He is very inquisitive,
always asking questions, and on Sunday we both
got the impression he might be wearing a
tape-recorder microphone, from the depth and
impertinence of his questions. If he's with the
nice guys, I don't care; but the odds are, he's
not... -- David Irving Slept poorly on
the plane. Arrived back at Heathrow morning. I put
the box containing the doll's china tea set, which
I bought for her weeks ago in Myrtle Creek, Oregon,
in the drawing room for Jessica to find. 4:30 p.m. a
blank phone call. "Caller withheld their number"
(lawyers, process servers etc.?)  NDREW
rings urgently, he has today been furnished with a
copy
of a letter
from [millionaire] Trevor Chinn to
[millionaire] Octav Botnar, former
chief of Datsun Motors who fled to Switzerland to
escape prosecution for UK tax fraud, appealing for
funds to help Lipstadt
defend
her case against the "Holocaust denier" David
Irving. They say specifically that they want to be
able to afford the very best [attorney],
namely Anthony Julius [of Mishcon de Reya law
firm], to put an end to me once and for all.
The letter indicates that Julius has himself
contacted Chinn.
A Web-search
yields the following snippet: "KPMG's Murray points
out that in its prosecution of Octav Botnar, former
head of car manufacturer Nissan's UK operations,
the Inland Revenue worked closely with the
Norwegian, Dutch and Austrian tax
authorities." I draft the
following modestly phrased announcement for the
Website. Latest news on
the Libel Action against Deborah
LipstadtHer lawyer
Anthony Julius pleads to the Underworld for
Cash Frightened
that dirty tricks alone will not get Lipstadt
off the hook which she has herself wrought, with
her recklessly libellous book Denying the
Holocaust, Lipstadt's defence lawyers Mishcon de
Reya [link] are frantically appealing,
through the Board of Deputies of British Jews
and other Jewish organisations around the world,
for massive funds to pay star lawyer the
(already indecently wealthy) Anthony Julius the
fees he intends to charge. In the first
days of May 1998, according to word from members
of his staff, Julius sent out shoals of letters
to the traditional bankrollers of these lies,
including Trevor Chinn--who held slush-fund the
Labour Party and Tony Blair--and through Chinn
even to wanted criminal Octav Botnar, the former
head of car manufacturer Nissan's UK operations,
whom the Inland Revenue prosecuted for tax fraud
working closely with the Norwegian, Dutch and
Austrian tax authorities, and who has taken
refuge in Switzerland, appealing for money to
help destroy the "Holocaust denier" (as they
infamously describe the historian) David
Irving. Odd
bed-fellows Lipstadt has chosen for herself--or
perhaps not so odd after all. Bartek Z., my
Polish translator, e-mails me this
query: The
editor-in-chief of the literary magazine
Przeglod "Po tytulem" which, I believe,
you have, already received, asked me whether I
could ask you for telling them about the book of
your life. ... If you can think of some book of
your life, a novel, short story, a historical
memoir, a collection of verses etc which made an
extraordinary impression on you, that would be
just fine. I send this
immediate response to Z.: Two
books have helped to shape my life, for better
or for worse. When I was about ten I read
[Failure of a Mission] the
memoirs of Sir Nevile Henderson, the pre-war
British ambassador in Berlin, who died during
the war. In this he described his vain attempts
to prevent the madness of war breaking out, and
he revealed how much he personally blamed the
hatreds generated by the British Press ("Fleet
Street") for the onset of the war in 1939. Then
about two or three years later I read a copy of
the book Hitler's Table Talk. This was
edited by Hugh Trevor-Roper, and published by
Weidenfeld & Nicolson. It consists of
almost-verbatim notes on Hitler's remarks during
his meals from 1941 to 1944. The notes were
written by Heinrich Heim, Martin Bormann's
adjutant, whom I later got to know very well. I
was struck by the evident depth and breadth of
knowledge, whether erroneous or accurate,
professed by Hitler. I used to read a little of
this book each night, and I still find myself
quoting some of his sayings. This book gives a
far better insight into Hitler's thinking than
Mein Kampf, which had a mixture of
authors. When writing my book Hitler's
War I
was able to use the original German texts, which
were kept in the custody of François
Genoud, a Swiss friend of the Bormann
descendants. Other historians were not allowed
to see these German texts for many years, which
resulted in them accusing me of "manipulating"
the English texts, and "distortions". In fact
only I had the originals. C'est la vie!
DAVID
IRVING 2 p.m. to
Davenport Lyons to read their client's Discovery.
Nothing really shocking, very anodyne compared with
the vicious stuff that Mishcon had pulled
together. At six p.m.
however a courier delivers a massive box with
twelve inches of files and documents -- annexes to
an affidavit
sworn by one Anthony Julius,
of Mishcon, seeking to have my Discovery set aside.
Fair enough, but the date
set down for hearing
is in mid-July, which is awkward. I may have to
make a round trip back by air from Key West,
costly. I spend all
evening reading the affidavit,
then
posting its supporting affidavit on the Website,
and asking friends in Washington state and Oregon
for information on the people named in it, who are
almost all unknown to me. Ah, the
Internet! Material on Anthony Julius's deponee pal
Jonathon
Mozzochi
[chief of the Oregon based ADL-front
organisation "Coalition
for Human Dignity"]
floods in during the night. He and his friends have
a criminal record (arson, violence, murder); bet
Julius did not know that! Lamonte
Westmoreland, a Los Angeles TV producer, phones, to
arrange filming of the Göring interview in
Chicago for the A & E Channel on
Thursday. Down
to High Court at two p.m. for hearing of my
application for postponement of Mishcon's proposed
July 6 hearing. Mishcon comes with three people --
including Harriet Benson [... who
...] declines to shake hands, etc. I make my
application to Master Trench briefly, he
nods benevolently, listens with mounting impatience
as Harriet puts her wordy and verbose case, reading
from a script. Harriet makes much of my
Website,
that I am putting everything, affidavits, summons,
the lot on it within hours of being served. Yes,
these people don't like the fierce heat of exposure
to the public gaze one little bit. I am about to
respond, when Trench shuffles his papers together
and announces flatly that he is granting my
application as it is quite reasonable. The Mishcon
lawyers are staggered, their faces a picture:
speechless with rage.
 ED
FOR two hours' sleep, the taxi driver rings the
bell at 7:35 a.m. to take me to Heathrow. Plane
takes off at 10:30 a.m. Sir Winston (that is, his
life-sized
Focal Point poster)
is waved aboard and gets stowed behind some
seats.
Arrive at
Chicago O'Hare airport at about one p.m., a few
minutes early. At eight a.m. we set off to Ohio. We
stop at Indianapolis for an hour for coffee. Then
on to Cincinnati, arriving there at three p.m.
(which, somewhat later, we recall is an hour later,
local time). Mad dash to get over to St George's
Church hall, an august, baroque, polished-mahogany
monastery-style kind of building. I speak upstairs
in the library to a private meeting of around 15 to
20 souls.  E-mails bring
word that back in London Mishcon's are up to
monkey-business of some sort. Have requested a
further hearing before Master Trench, in an
endeavour to overturn his decision. I work on the
Website until just before 9 a.m., inserting the
photo of a rather unattractive Mozzochi, the
witness relied upon by Julius. No time for
breakfast. All day in the militaria show, then to
The Monk's Room, where I speak at 7:30 p.m. for a
couple of hours. Good crowd, and excellent book
sales. David P. has put up a good show. Wakened at 7:30
a.m. by phone call from Katina of the Channel Four
television production company making the film on
Hitler's Women. She picks my brains for half
an hour. Into the militaria show at 9 a.m., no time
for breakfast again. Set out for
Chicago next day at three p.m., arrive soon after
nine, supper at a downtown restaurant. At the
apartment around eleven p.m., and send this e-mail
to Benté: Chicago,
26.5.98, 12:15 AM. Got back from Cincinnati to
Chicago at 10 p.m. today. 800 mile round trip.
Saw quite a weird thing on the way in off the
freeway, in State Street, on the outskirts of
this city, in a very run down Black suburb: a
shop advertising "funeral headstones engraved
while you wait". Some people wait all their
lives for that moment, I suppose. Benté
sends message from Lovell White Durrant, who are
acting for The
Observer and Gitta Sereny. We have
noted that you have now removed from your
website the reproductions of the contents of the
[Macmillan Ltd.] documents which were
disclosed by our clients to you and which we
referred in our letter dated 14 May 1998.However, you
have not removed the
index
which describes these documents, nor have you
removed the final paragraph of the article
"A
British Publisher's Betrayal of their
Author"
which summarises their contents. ... We must
insist that you remove forthwith the index and
paragraph referred to, and make no further
reference on your web site to the documents
concerned. 7 p.m. dinner
with W. at the Brauhaus restaurant on Lincoln
Avenue. I already saw him last year at Cleveland,
and he told me then of his Paula Hitler and
Reinhard
Heydrich
collections. Last time before that was in about
1982, at Ed Schaefer's flat in Crystal City: I
today found the note I wrote, for Radical's Diary
in Focal Point: TAKES
ALL sorts to make an American law officer. At a
friend's home in Crystal City, across the
Potomac from Georgetown, I met ex-policeman W.,
a seemingly wealthy collector of the crankier
Nazi memorabilia. He owns an extensive
correspondence between Paula Hitler and
her famous brother; alas, we do not know what it
contains, as W. cannot read German. His fingers
were heavy with unsightly gold rings purported
to be of the period. Around his neck he wore on
a brass chain necklace a hotel key-knob for room
No. 106 embossed "Dreesen Bad Godesberg." He had
bought this for a several thousand dollars from
the hotel manager, it being Hitler's bedroom
number. He may have made that innkeeper a very
happy man, because it looked quite a modern knob
to me. W. pulled out of his back trouser pocket
an inch-thick wallet of photographs of his
trinkets and relics -- Goering's daggers,
Napoleon's sword, etc. The photos were well
thumbed, the frayed edges trimmed off again and
again until some of them were cameo
sized.American
collectors are the bane of European historians.
They trade the records of the Third Reich and
other empires for their autograph value, like
cigarette cards or vintage cars, without being
able to read a line of their content. In 1946 a
former American Counter-Intelligence Corps
agent, Robert G., filched the entire
correspondence exchanged between Hitler and
Eva Braun as well as her private diaries.
This stolen material has vanished from view, and
he is not saying who now has it. Perhaps he no
longer knows. He explained when I pounced on him
in New Mexico, "I have no interest in publishing
anything that may make That Man seem more
human." W. has a grip
like steel, one glass eye, brain damage from a
police car accident in the 1970s, and a steamroller
conversational manner that flattens all attempts to
reply. He wears a gold ring with a face somewhat
larger and heavier than the Krugerrand; he
apologises that he dropped it on the cement a few
days ago, I ask: "Did it do much damage to the
concrete!" He demands yodelling from the two
Bavarian brothers manning the electric accordion
and guitar on the stage; he throws out loud howls
himself in chorus with them. His brain wanders this
way and that, but more than once throws up highly
useful facts.  After
two hours he finally opens his attaché cases
and out comes the Heydrich collection: photos and
postcards provided by Lina Heydrich to an
American woman writing her late husband's biography
-- it was never written -- the
items were sold
to a Chicago antique dealer, from whom W. bought
them. Fantastic photos of Heydrich as a
steel-helmeted fifteen-year-old in Freikorps
uniform; with his Aryan blond children, fondly
playing with a little blonde girl (his daughter?),
etc. And with Himmler. I arrange to see him again
tomorrow one p.m. for lunch and to spend all day
Tuesday at Holly, Michigan with him.
The Paula Hitler
stuff, which I have not yet seen, seems more
problematical: she has signed each page Paula
Hitler Wolf; why -- are they interrogation reports,
or what? He is vague about how much there
is. I didn't get the
name Truffelschwein for nothing. Back to the
apartment, drained and écrasé, at
11:16 PM and resume work on the Website. Up at six a.m.
First day of BookExpo America show.  At
the FPP stand, our big pictures are real crowd
stoppers. Around 2:30 Michael Dorr of Da
Capo Press Inc. shuffles across to us, shakes
hands, and explains in broad terms why he has had
to cancel his interest in the Rommel biography,
although it was a huge best seller in the 1980s and
he has personally pressed for its purchase. He says
the final decision was taken by a panel of twelve,
most of whom now hate me. I do not inquire their
names.
I thank him for
coming over and telling me personally. "You are a
bigger man for doing so," I tell the
five-foot-nothing Dorr. He winces, and says that he
has taken pleasure in saying all this to my face.
He repeats that no publisher in New York is now
willing to touch me, out of sheer gibbering fear of
the ADL. Still, it was nice of him to
come.  SEND
THIS e-mail to
[a correspondent], who's getting loathsome
with his trivial queries:
Dear
Mr. A. -- I am a frightfully busy and overworked
person. I worked until 3:30 a.m. this morning,
and was working again at 6:45 a.m. this morning.
I have been at the BookExpo all day. I am
exhausted. I face a four hundred mile drive in a
car tomorrow, and a major speech the next day.
It is not rudeness on my part, I just do not
have the time to answer questions all the
time. Up at six a.m.;
pack the car, at Lakeside cafe at 9:05 a.m. to meet
S. and his father. He shows us a 1940
Himmler album of the 1940 French campaign.
More important, about sixty letters from Himmler to
Hedwig Potthast, dated 1938 to 1944, some
150 pages all told, in handwriting, all except one
of the letters being in ink. Sends her gifts of
wine, and press clippings about Der Olle for her to
save for the little boy (their illegitimate
son). In July 1942 he
writes that he is just off to Auschwitz and Lublin.
On January 20, 1943 he writes about the cares he
has -- he knows he must do many harsh things and
make many Einzelpersonen unhappy, but it is all for
Germany's sake. The items are genuine beyond doubt,
and with ninety-percent certainty come from the
same source as the visiting card in B.'s
possession, namely the Nuremberg IMT files. No
explicit references to the Jews, shootings,
etc. On May 30, 1944
he writes that she should use the soap and things
he is sending her without worry, as he will keep
topping them up bis Kriegsende, which word he
underlines and adds three exclamation marks,
reflecting the general mood of exuberance
prevailing just before D-day. The collection also
includes three or four photos, for example of
Himmler seated in a motor car (vanity licence tag:
"SS-1"). Set out at
twelve noon from Chicago for Michigan, to see W's
collection. He has advised us to come along the
Ohio Turnpike, but a glance at the map -- too late
-- shows that this is a detour of over 100 miles.
He explains later this is to spare us driving
through one Black neighbourhood. Aaargh! As it is,
we drive all afternoon and evening and it is nearly
9 p.m. before we reach his house. I scan his best
photographs, until five or six a.m., scanning fifty
or a hundred of the most horrifying candid photos
of scenes in concentration camps, etc. I stretch
out on his sofa, two feet too short for me, for an
hour. In the morning
there is already an E-mail from South Africa about
the Heydrich collection. I write a response, with
W. at my side: The
owner (who is sitting next to me at this moment)
does not want to split the collection. I have
seen all the (fifty (50)) original photos, and
he has given me unfortunately only a sniff (last
night, at midnight) at the documents, mostly
letters from Lina Heydrich to a third
party written around 1950, about Heydrich,
Himmler, the SS and Nazi party; these appeared
to me to be about 100 sheets of paper, cards,
envelopes, mostly typed but some handwritten (by
Lina); Reinhard Heydrich material
includes wartime postcards signed Reini, a naval
document (from his naval period) with the navy
ensign on it. My friend wants US $50,000 for the
whole collection. If you have a serious
customer, he will be prepared to show it, but he
is very cagey about letting anything out of his
hands. I am not happy about being the middle
agent in what is largely a blind deal, but there
it is. The material is authentic, of that there
is no doubt. If the customer has NS items to
trade, my friend is willing to do a part
exchange. It's the way he does business. On-line again at
1:40 p.m., further exchanges with Channel Four's
Katina. Arrive at
Cleveland at six p.m. after a 330-mile drive;
meeting due to start at 7:30 p.m. A great fun
evening all round. Leave Cleveland at eleven a.m.
to head south. Drive all day down Interstate 77
covering about six hundred miles, until around 9
p.m. when we stop at a motel at Mount Airy. Go on
line at 9:29 PM. Up at seven a.m.
Awful breakfast at cafe. Melted foam butter, etc. I
protest to the waitress about these artificial
products. She says,
"Everybody eats them." I observe,
"That's why you're all so fat." "I ain't fat."
"Yes you is." She brings a
brown plastic tub of something else, marked Country
Crock, a "spread," offering, "This is what we put
on the baked potatoes." The label reads: "Fifty
percent vegetable oil," and gives no indication
whatever of what the other half is, apart from a
tiny U in a circle. So it will evidently pass
muster by the more chosen, but less, choosier of
us. E
ARRIVE at the Ramada Inn, Charleston, South
Carolina, at 4:33 p.m., three minutes after our
predicted ETA. But it seems that nobody knows that
I am scheduled to speak. We go downtown -- I was
last here in 1976 with Carla Venchiarutti,
researching Rommel at The Citadel's archives, and
then again in 1980 to interview György
Heltai for Uprising -- and I sit alone
in a cafe for two hours in the sun, listening to a
Black band and a large, vibrating, female
singer. The organisers
say that Of Course I can speak if I want to (and
quite a lot of people have turned up expecting me
to). I refuse on principle. If my name is not
listed as a speaker, I am not a speaker, and I am
not going to step into a deadbeat's vacant slot to
speak, I say. I sit in the foyer and sulk, and
people occasionally come out and bring me books to
sign from the table which A. and S. have set up
outside the meeting. A two-day, 1,100 mile drive
here from Cleveland, for nothing. Not pleased at
all. We drive on in a
livid mood at eleven p.m.; heading down Route 17 to
Georgia. Find a Best Western motel still open at
1:30 a.m. after a 150-mile drive. Not a good day at
all. Onward into
Florida. At 9:45 a.m. I send this e-mail to
Benté:- Wonder
where the software got to. It was sent priority
mail. You'll need it.It is
swelteringly hot here. Unfortunately Interstate
95 was blocked by a forest fire south of
Jacksonville, so police turned all traffic off
it onto US. 1, which caused immense delays and
after waiting for hours on the Interstate I
decided to drive past a police block onto a side
road toward the coast and I have spent the night
here at Flagler on the Atlantic, a very nice
seafront motel, two bedrooms, a drawing room and
kitchen for $50. I shall return here in future.
A beautiful little seaside town like Peacehaven,
with dunes like the beach at South Africa, and a
very gentle sea. It would be a nice place to
come back sometime with Jessica; As soon as I
am fixed in one location, I shall get a lot of
letters out. The first thing: a major fund
raising appeal, to knock out the Mishcon
threat.  We arrive at
Fort Lauderdale around six p.m.; the meeting begins
at seven p.m. About seventy present, and reasonable
book sales. Some lunatic skinheads here, with
suspiciously new-looking T-shirts
reading
HATE-WATCH,
so I can expect references to that in future
attacks on me. Wonder who hired them! Up at nine a.m.
The usual slew of unpleasant e-mails. Mishcon's
have written: Deborah
Lipstadt. We
refer to the two Supplemental Lists of Documents
you served dated the 19 and 20 May respectively.
We would now like to inspect the documents
disclosed on these Lists. Please let us know
when convenient. These are ten
linear feet of my press-clipping files. I
respond: I have
arrived last night at the southern point of my
United States tour. It has been a 5,000 mile
drive to this point, and I drive a further
12,000 miles before returning to the U.K. in
August....These records
are available for inspection in the same room as
before or the adjoining rooms. Please telephone
my London staff to arrange a suitable date.
Since you have not yet paid our invoice no.
11853 dated 20 May 1998, which we submitted
under the agreed rules for reasonable copying
charges, ... we shall not feel obliged to extend
the courtesy of providing Xerox copies to this
supplemental Discovery. There is of course no
objection to your making handwritten copies of
any of the documents. Hart, aber
ungerecht, as Field Marshal Erhard Milch's
nephew Ministerialdirigent Dr M. once said
to me. In Key West at
last. Draft an appeal letter to my inner circle of
supporters, without which I cannot survive for the
next months and see through publication of
Churchill's
War, vol.
ii to completion. Good and helpful
e-mail message from M. in Moscow, initial probings
in the Moscow archives on
Himmler. Back to the
rented house at nine p.m. after unsuccessful
attempts to find a cheap eatery. Everything moving
up-market, even the Banana Cafe. I go out, heading
for the Turtle Kraals, when after fifty yards
disaster strikes. I trip over a paving slab in the
darkness, which a tree root has raised two inches,
and with my hands in my pockets I fall flat on my
face. I go down with a
horrible crack and black out so badly that I just
lie on the concrete with blood streaming from my
broken nose until I came to with passers-by bending
over me.  Wow,
it was some crack. There is a dent in my forehead
and chin, and my eyes swell up and close completely
during the evening. I look a terrible sight.
Passers-by said I should sue the City of Key West
for thousands, but, alas I am English and we don't
do that (do we?)
Up late, at ten
a.m., as the pain has kept me awake much of the
night. A look in the mirror through my fast closing
right eye (my left is totally blacked out) is
shocking, I look uglier than the Hunchback of Notre
Dame, except that my hump is on my face. I dig the
Virgin Airways eye-mask out of my case, and find it
covers much of the damage. The morning's
e-mail brings a remarkable letter
from an Israeli journalist
offering me Himmler's papers stolen from the
Russian archives. I reply cautiously. The proper
course of action will be to alert the German
government archives, but this will no doubt bar my
access to them. I do so, nonetheless. Rude letter from
Lovell White Durrant about my publishing
their
"copyright" letter
on my Website. How they squeal. I return the
Ford rental car to Hertz at the little local
airport, a few hundred yards from the southernmost
point of the United States. It has brought us here
from Chicago. Glad to be rid of it, as always. We
have been on US soil again for exactly four weeks.
What a pleasure. I cycle back along the Atlantic as
huge storm clouds gather. A water funnel hits the
island's other side. I cycled home in the
torrential rain, which blinds both my eyes even
more badly. Can't see properly, and nearly crash
into parked cars. I find e-mails
from the BBC, finally firming up a visit to Poland
for mid August. I slink into my downstairs bedroom
feeling once more like the Hunchback of N.D.
Everywhere I have been today, people have done a
double-take and shrunk away. What rotten luck with
this accident. An appalling
meal at the Marriott Casa Marina. "You want
tap water, Sir?," said by the waitress with
a scathing tone of voice. Rock-hard bread, stringy,
cheap-cut steak, indifferent service. I tell them
so. E-mail to H.,
with instructions for her research in the Moscow
archives; I would have been happier if I had a
different publisher behind me. I send a long fax to
Wolf Jobst Siedler, asking him to write a letter of
introduction for her. I don't think he will do it.
They are all cowards now. [IN
FACT Siedler, whom
David Irving has known for thirty years, rises
to the occasion and proves him quite
wrong]. TO BE
CONTINUED |
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