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oouDocuments on the THE Lilliputian enemy are hard at work hacking away at my shins, which some of them can just reach up to . [ Previous Radical’s Diary ] September 6, 2009 (Sunday) Windsor (England) A QUICK online search indicates that El Mundo has still not posted the interview on their Madrid website. Ho-hum . [ Our website has now posted the interview in facsimile and text and English translation ].
September 7, 2009 (Monday) Windsor – London – Windsor (England) The Xerox document scanner is playing up again. Several people sent me the review by Robert Harris of a book on Somerset Maugham in yesterday ‘s Sunday Times . He was reviewing a new Somerset Maugham biography by Selina Hastings and wrote Hers may be the most favourably disposed biographical approach to a generally acknowledged monster since David Irving wrote Hitler’s War .
That does not mean it is a bad book: far from it (nor was Irving’s, for that matter). One correspondent comments: “Funnily enough I’ve always found RH to be complimentary about your work (and rightly so). I remember a review that I still have for your Goebbels book in 1996 that was very favourable too.” I reply: “Very considerate. Yes, I have known Robert Harris ( right ) since he was a Cambridge [England] student in 1977 and think highly of him.”
Ghent University cancels plans for a September 30 function . . . Not unexpected. I send a grumpy reply: “You have to appreciate it is very difficult for me to hold a date open, which effectively compromises the whole month for me – I cannot plan for example to go to the USA if I have a date fixed so far ahead. When you have completed your own preparations, contact me again about a future date, but not before then.”
A BLOGGER going by the name Morris Herman asks to film an interview with me for YouTube, and we set up a webcam interview at 3:30 pm. He has an American East Coast accent. His very first words are: ” you are renowned as a Holocaust denier and –” I interrupt mildly to suggest that whatever people may say, I am not a Holocaust denier , as anybody who reads my books or interviews knows.
He persists doggedly with the same remark, not once but twice, and in consequence suddenly finds himself with a blank screen in front of him. “This interview is over,” are my parting words. If you expect to get a personality to give you free time for an interview which you will no doubt market in some way, it is a good idea not to start off by insulting him. (The real professionals leave that to the very end, after they have got what they want with honeyed words and overtures.)
Why should I waste my time on such twerps. He phones in feigned distraction a few minutes later, and begins again — he has been misunderstood, etc.: “All I know of you is what I read in the Press, you are a Holocaust denier .” The press. The journaille . Precisely. “The Holocaust is a matter of utter disinterest to me,” say I. “It may be of central interest to the Jews but it is not to me. Goodbye.”
A millionaire industralist from New York emails to cancel our Windsor luncheon at the end of the month: “I’ll fill you in later.” I reply: “That’s fine, D., and nice of you to keep me informed so swiftly. Hope it was nothing serious.” No doubt the New York press has picked up the clamour about Israel and El Mundo .
The interview was unfortunately rather tendentiously, i.e. unhelpfully, edited — no reference for example to the actual numbers I had said were killed in 1942 and 1943 in the “Reinhardt” camps. INTO Eton to post the mail, then straight into London to fetch Jessica for supper. She begins with the words: “I have a confession to make…” I say I can suspect what it is (the crystal candelabra) and she confirms it straight away.
It was that July evening out here with the girls, while I was away in the western USA; it toppled onto the floor and smashed into a thousand pieces. I am so proud that she decided on her own to come clean. The two thousand pound bauble is unimportant compared with this fresh proof of her good upbringing. I tingle with quiet pride all evening. . . She is a very well balanced teenager.
I report her confession in a brief glowing text message to B.; the predictive text conveys the tragic object only as the candle bra and I get a puzzled message back; I tell her again how proud we should be of our daughter. On the way