FROM: Roland Phillips DATE: 2nd January
1992 Many thanks for your note of 6th December, and apologies for delay in replying. I've been away. 1. David Irving. We have one more book under contract from Irving, and will have an expert reading of that that when it is delivered before going ahead with publications. We have turned down many other proposals from him and have no plans to continue publishing after the forthcoming book. If this helps you to reassure any prospective authors we are happy for you to say it (although not too publicly if possible); it is true to say that when Macmillan took him on (and the current book contracted) he was not nearly as extreme as he is now. 2. I will remember your
interest in Karel von Wolferen, but will say that it is
extremely unlikely that we will be reverting
rights! Happy New Year. |
Return to Summary: "A Publisher's betrayal of their Author.
Return to Summary: "A Publisher's betrayal of their Author."
To: AGW, cc: FR From: RP Date: 6th July
1992 Re: David
Irving
Thanks. |
Return to Summary: "A Publisher's betrayal of their Author."
Letter from Dr John Fox to The Daily Telegraph published on April 18, 1996: Sir,-- Rabbi Schmuel Boteach of Oxford University's L'Chaim
Society somewhat judiciously tries to distance himself from
those in the Anglo-Jewish community who have described the
former Gert-Rudolf Flick benefaction as having been
'tainted' (report, April 17). Dr John Fox, London, SE12 |
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Letter from David Irving to Ian Chapman, Managing Director of Macmillan Ltd. London, November 11, 1997 Dear Ian, I am as you know an author of books formerly published with modest success by Macmillan Ltd. Until 1991 we main-tained cordial relations. I have learned of a number of things which thereafter occurred behind closed doors at your firm which must give cause for alarm to any author, regardless of his views. 1. Steven Kennedy noted in December 1991 that people were putting pressure on Macmillan to cease publishing my works, including an Oxford Professor of Politics. Since you have seen fit to make all our private mutual correspondence available to third parties, without consulting me or inviting my consent, would you be so good as to identify the people and professor mentioned above, for the purposes of litigation. There is surely no need for me to subpoena these details? 2. In July 1992 my own editor Roland Phillips, in response to outside events, gave secret instructions to one Ray Fidler to destroy all remaining copies of my editions of The War Path and Hitler's War, around 1,300 volumes all told. I was never told of this. (Mysteriously, no order was given to destroy my Rommel biography). A few days later one Amanda Tolworthy confirmed that the order had been carried out, in the best Nazi fashion, and the books had been destroyed. I shall invite the newspapers, in due course, to draw some obvious parallels; here I shall comment only that your firm's action not only deprived me of royalty income but was a violation of my contractual right of first refusal when there is any question of disposing of remainders, inflicting actual financial loss upon me. Please inform me by return of post how you intend to redress this issue. I reserve all my legal rights accruing from our author's agreement. To be frank, I believe that in 1991-2 your firm behaved in a shameful manner, unworthy of your great name.
Yours sincerely,
David Irving
Mr Ian Chapman | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Letter from David Irving to Ian Chapman, Managing Director of Macmillan Ltd. London, December 14, 1997 Dear Mr Chapman, You responded swiftly, on November 12, to the letter of November 11 in which I expressed my astonishment at my discovery that the Macmillan company secretly and precipitously destroyed all copies of my highly praised biography of Adolf Hitler, for whatever reason, one day in July 1992 without informing me. A month has however passed since then, with no further word. 2. You indicated that you were going to have the file retrieved to enable you to investigate this scandalous affair. I was puzzled to hear that the file was off site, as it is evident that your firm recently and secretly, and although under no compulsion to do so, made available the entire file of your firm's correspondence with me, your author, to my opponents in a major libel action which I am bringing, without any indication to me that you were proposing to do so. (I have of course nothing to conceal: it goes however to the root of publisher/author relations). 3. It may well be that your firm found itself in July 1992 faced with ugly outside pressures which you were not minded, or able, to withstand. But the people of this country - including my father - fought two world wars to preserve our freedom of speech and freedom of opinion, and it is shocking to see a firm with your great name so idly casting those values to the winds. Your action in destroying these books amounted to a substantial breach of contract, and I am advised that, under both that heading and others, I have grounds to claim substantial compensation. Please regard this therefore as a letter before action. Let us hope however there will be no need for me to take the seemingly inevitable next steps. Yours sincerely,
David Irving
Mr Ian Chapman | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Letter from David Irving to Ian Chapman, Managing Director of Macmillan Ltd. London, December 21, 1997 Dear Mr Chapman, Further to my recent two letters, to which I am awaiting a full answer with mounting curiosity, it now seems on the basis of further evidence which I have seen unlikely that we shall be able to reach agreement without litigation on the damage inflicted by your company's extraordinary decision to destroy all copies of my books without informing me. I have incidentally received also several letters which had until now puzzled me, like the enclosed, from fans and readers world-wide who have tried unsuccessfully to write to me c/o my books' publisher, namely your firm Macmillan Ltd. Somebody in your company has been refusing without explanation to forward these letters to me as author, and sending them back to the correspondents. Since several media companies received similar rebuffs, this too has inflicted loss on me. I attach particular importance to an answer to one query in my letter of November 11, namely: "Steven Kennedy noted in December 1991 that people were putting pressure on Macmillan to cease publishing my works, including an Oxford Professor of Politics." May I once again request the identity of this illiberal academic gentleman? Would it not have been more proper and honourable to refer such critics either directly or indirectly to me as your author and invite my comments on their criticisms? Yours sincerely,
David Irving
Mr Ian Chapman
[Manuscript PS to effect that since I am aware of a 6-year limit for simple damages claim I shall not show undue patience] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Letter from David Irving to Ian Chapman, Managing Director of Macmillan Ltd. London, December 23, 1997 Dear Ian Thank you for your very full letter of December 22, which shows that you are taking this matter as seriously as I do. I do not accept your arguments, and you probably do not expect me to. I am taking High Court action against two sets of defendants, as you may know (Penguin Books & Deborah Lipstadt; and The Observer & Gitta Sereny). In the course of these actions, which have both reached the stage of Discovery, and elsewhere, certain papers have come to light. In particular the lawyers acting for The Observer & Sereny have obtained copies of substantial numbers of original private letters passing between yourselves and myself, and of internal Macmillan memoranda. These documents are, under the rules of the Supreme Court, still privileged until they are introduced into court, at which time they come into the public domain. That being so, I would prefer to discuss my complaint personally, and I would suggest a meeting with yourself or your legal representative as soon as possible after your return on January 6, to which I will bring the papers to which I am referring. This will enable you to prosecute your own inquiries. Notwithstanding what you say about Macmillan's policy, prima facie it would appear that Roland Phillips or your predecessor Ms Rubinstein turned over copies from your firm's files to outsiders, with the intended consequence of damaging me; but I may be doing them a grave injustice by even suggesting this possibility. For my part I shall now challenge the defendants' lawyers to identify the provenance of these documents, which may bring us further in this unfortunate matter. Yours sincerely,
David Irving
Mr Ian Chapman | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Letter from David Irving to Ian Chapman, Managing Director of Macmillan Ltd. London, January 13, 1998 Dear Ian I am sorry not to have heard from you after my letter of December 23. I am enclosing, in confidence, one of the items of which I have become aware, and you may understand my sense of rage at your predecessor. I expect that as an honourable publisher you will share my sentiments. I think it would be undesirable, given the circumstances, for an author to be given no recourse other than through the courts against one of this country's leading publishers. Such an action would inevitably prove very costly. I can tell you, again in confidence, that, since our last letter, the defendants in one of the two High Court libel actions I have brought have approached me with a view to ending the litigation by settlement, rather than face the ruinous cost of continued court proceedings (they already face a legal bill of over £100,000). Please read my letter of December 23 again. Yours sincerely,
David Irving
Mr Ian Chapman | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Letter from David Irving to Ian Chapman, Managing Director of Macmillan Ltd. London, January 22, 1998 Dear Ian, Can I take it that you will be making a substantial reply to my letter? I have heard nothing from you since your return from the New Year leave. I am consulting legal advice on Monday afternoon, and it would be good to avoid having to issue proceedings which would bring the whole matter (namely the steps taken by Macmillan in 1992 to hound one of their own authors and secretly burn thousands of his books) out in public. I expect that you will by now also have completed your inquiries into how your confidential files were delivered into the hands of third parties with this unfortunate outcome. You will be interested to hear that the defendants in one of the actions I am bringing in the High Court have approached me with a view to a settlement. Yours sincerely,
David Irving
Mr Ian Chapman | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Letter from David Irving to Denton Hall, lawyers acting for Macmillan Ltd. London, January 31, 1998
Dear Sirs Macmillan Ltd WITHOUT PREJUDICE Thank you for your letter of January 26 in the above matter. While conscious of the provisions of RSC, O.24, I am confidentially enclosing a copy of the index to that part of the Discovery in another action which reveals the evidently extensive compromising of your client's internal records which has somehow taken place. I would ask that you in the first instance confirm that there is prima facie no case of the documents' having been forged. (I say this, as at least one of the other documents in the Discovery in question turns out to be counterfeit). I have copies of all these documents in my possession now. I see no reason why these documents will not all come into the public domain under O.14, r 14a, in the normal course of the litigation in which they have been discovered. Yours sincerely,
David Irving Denton Hall | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Letter from David Irving to Ian Chapman, Managing Director of Macmillan Ltd. London, February 2, 1998 Dear Mr Chapman, Thank you for your letter. Meanwhile you might like to send to Dentons the enclosures which I found last night while preparing my file on the case. All rights in at least one of the volumes which made up Hitler's War had reverted to me before the extraordinary 1992 incident - which included the right to expect that a publisher would not do the dirty on his own author behind his back! You will also find the scurrilous Mr Phillips assuring me that of course I would continue to be offered all remainders (note his wording!); not, of course, that it is true to describe the victims of this Book Burning as remainders - they were sacrificed on the altar of God Know's What, at a time when the book was enjoying perpetual heavy sales. Of course my complaint, if it comes to one, will not merely be about destroyed remainders, but something rather more serious. Yours sincerely,
David Irving
Mr Ian Chapman | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Letter from David Irving to Denton Hall, lawyers acting for Macmillan Ltd. London, February 7, 1998 Dear Sirs, Thank you for your letter of February 2. I am glad that a firm of, as my colleagues have given me to understand, your well known reputation for fairness are representing Macmillan; this should enable us to reach a swift resolution of this matter. 2. Given that the putative cause of action accrued in July 1996, notwithstanding that I learned of the "injury" only last year, any limitation period on my claim might be held to expire in July of this year; you will appreciate that I cannot allow matters to drift out of time, but might well have to issue a holding writ before then. 3. You ask for a copy of the Macmillan file to which I refer. With regard to some of the documents, I find myself in some trepidation, given the provisions of the rules about discovery, although there can hardly be any contempt in publishing a document to the party which first authored or received it (Macmillan or yourselves as their agent). May I however first invite you to give me what would seem to be a proper undertaking in this case, namely that mindful of the spirit of the above-mentioned rule you will not disclose to parties other than the authors any such documents which I provide. Once the documents are read out in open court, of course, this problem is removed: O.24, r 14a). 4. In case Macmillan have not yet forwarded them to you, I meanwhile invite your attention to a few pages to which the above strictures do not apply. Yours sincerely,
David Irving Denton Hall | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Letter from David Irving to Denton Hall, lawyers acting for Macmillan Ltd. London, February 19, 1998 Dear Sirs, Your ref SMG/cc/1233657.01/18990.00024: Macmillan Ltd Thank you for your letter of February 12. On the basis of the undertakings implicit in your letter, not to show these documents to others than those who originated them, I am enclosing copies of a few of the papers which particularly disturb me. They show your client as going behind my back, under nameless pressures from outside, to destroy the position of trust which I had established with them as an author of many years' standing; then issuing secret orders to destroy all remaining copies of my works, with the result that I lost substantial continuing royalties, was deprived of the reputation and prestige deriving from the continued publication at a time of particular controversy for me, and was also robbed of my rights, both contractual and implicit from all our previous contractual relationships, to purchase from your clients all such books due for remaindering or destruction (as explicitly confirmed by Mr Roland Phillips in a letter to me only shortly before this disgraceful episode.) At the same time, which puts a particularly nasty "spin" on the episode, these same people were writing me oily and ingratiating letters and even inquiring when they could expect to see my next book! Thank God I took the decision only weeks later to retrieve all rights from your clients. Yours sincerely,
David Irving Denton Hall | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Letter from David Irving to Denton Hall, lawyers acting for Macmillan Ltd. London, March 3, 1998 Dear Sirs Your ref SMG/cc/1233657.01/18990.00024: Macmillan Ltd It is now two weeks since I supplied those few documents to you. I shall cease to pursue this matter, and as I am shortly leaving for the United States I shall find it necessary to issue the writ which I mentioned in an earlier letter unless I hear from you very soon, as I do not intend to allow this matter to fall into abeyance. I take a dim view of this clandestine censoring of an author's works - particularly mine - by weak-kneed and faithless publishers, and I am confident the British public will be scandalised too. The losses to me, of whatever nature, that I have incurred through Macmillan Ltd's actions, which were carefully concealed from me at the time, have been substantial. Please inform me of the current registered address of your clients in this matter. I ask, not only for the obvious reason, but because the firm has several times changed the registered address in recent years. Yours sincerely,
David Irving Denton Hall | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Letter from David Irving to Denton Hall, lawyers acting for Macmillan Ltd. London, March 8, 1998 Dear Sirs, Macmillan UK Ltd SMG/cc/1266447.01/18990.00024 Your letter of March 6. Under the special circumstances of this case I am reluctant to provide to you at this stage more documents than I have already, which are in my view adequate to indicate the substance of my complaint against your clients: namely that, succumbing and surrendering in a most shameful manner to outside pressures, they took unilateral actions to violate their covenants and contracts, by secretly and without informing me - like the Nazis of 1933! - destroying, at the insistence of outside parties, all stocks of my wellknown and highly praised biography of Adolf Hitler, with all the consequences that flowed from that action in terms of loss of material benefits and prestige to myself. Instead of acting in their author's best interests at all times - and I was hardly a new author, having published works with them for some ten years - they acted in this manner. The proper procedure under which further documents will be disclosed is under O.24, if it becomes necessary for me to commence High Court proceedings against your client, which I intend to do very shortly, given that the present climate of opinion seems to be somewhat against seemingly reputable publishers taking such secret actions under outside pressures. Yours sincerely,
David Irving Denton Hall | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Letter from Denton Hall, lawyers acting for Macmillan Ltd., to David Irving London, April 16, 1998
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The case continues... | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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