the career of David Irving The From the memoirs of David Irving From the David Irving unpublished memoirs. Written in Vienna prison, 2006. Posted here Winston Churchill Jr and David Frost gang up on Mr Irving (extract) IN LONDON, Michael White staged Rolf Hochhuth ‘s play Soldiers at the West End’s New Theatre in December 1968; at Kenneth Tynan ‘s invitation I had privately put a couple of thousand pounds into its production.

This gained me front-row seats on opening night; as the curtain came down I was the one who applauded loudly in the darkness and called for the author. The notices next day were brilliant, but tailed off after The Sunday Times’s Harold Hobson — Tynan’s arch-rival — denounced it; Hobson’s daughter was married to Lord Chandos ‘s son.

For two or three nights attendance figures were good, but then Prime Minister Harold Wilson denounced the play in the House of Commons as “anti-British” and audience figures collapsed. It was an odd phenomenon to experience from the inside. It was the reverse of what would have happened in many other countries. As for the money, of course I never saw it again. THE Churchill family started to kick out, not in the public arena but in clubland, if I can put it like that.

Randolph and his son Winston, now twenty-seven, decided that I would have to be destroyed by whatever means were possible. They hired lawyers and funded a hitherto unknown writer to destroy my name. The late Winston Churchill Jr . boasted of the fact in his excellent biography of his father Randolph. Thus it was that a strange figure entered our lives.

Tall, dashing, handsome, well-spoken, cosmopolitan, and evidently rich, Carlos Thompson introduced himself to us as a bon viveur , globetrotter, and would-be writer. (His real name turns out to have been Schafter; whether he was Jewish I never asked and it does not really matter.) He was a swashbuckling out-of-work actor of Argentine descent, a heartthrob aged forty-four. He was writing a book, he explained, about the 1943 Sikorski crash [the topic of my book Accident.

The Death of General Sikorski ]; he carefully lodged his impressive new attaché case on the low coffee table between us and talked for an hour or two, mostly about himself, if my memory is correct. His fluent and elegant Argentine-flavoured Spanish and his gaucho courtesies made a deep impression on Pilar, of course.

He kept asking me leading questions that seemed oddly phrased; I recall that I explained Rolf’s tempestuous exuberance with the words, “You must remember, he is a Child of the Arts.” In Thompson’s favour were his good looks and wealth, provided partly by his wife of ten years. She was Lillie Marie Peiser , a faded Jewish beauty nine years his senior; she had fled Poland and enjoyed both fortune as the ex-wife of Rex Harrison and fame in her own right as Hollywood actress Lilli Palmer .

NOW this man Thompson had willingly accepted the Churchill family’s commission to heap slops upon my name.

At the time of his visit in 1969 I did not know this, and saw no reason to mistrust him; it was only forty years later, reading the papers of Marshal of the RAF Sir John Slessor , in the Public Record Office, that I learned that this stranger had been put massively in funds by the Churchill family, by Randolph and young Winston, with just one intention — exacting revenge for my book The Destruction of Dresden . Thompson was a hired gun. Money was no object to him.

As Der Spiegel wrote at the time, “Er stieg nur in den teuersten Hotels ab.” [He checked only into the costliest hotels]. He flew first class to Johannesburg and Los Angeles and elsewhere, tracking down leads and clues; and he started work on a book, The Assassination of Winston Churchill , which was eventually to be distributed by a small publisher in Buckinghamshire who had been in business only since 1966.

The book ran into difficulties even before publication. Somebody mailed me anonymously a copy; perhaps it was even the Churchill clique themselves. It contained a string of seemingly deliberately libels. Thompson had retraced my steps, and attempted to prove me wrong. Since I had meticulously tape-recorded most of my interviews, it was not easy for him.

To give just one example, he had accused me of interviewing Anthony Quayle , the film actor, in New York City with a hidden tape-recorder (ironic in the circumstances, as it would turn out). Quayle had been the aide to the Governor of Gibraltar at the time of Sikorski’s mysterious death there. The use of hidden tape-recorders in the United States is a felony, so it was a serious charge.

In fact, the opening words on the tape, made during my May 1967 interview with him, were of myself asking Quayle whether he had any objection to my interviewing him with a tape-recorder, which was between us in his hotel room, to which could be heard replying, that he did not. Thompson’s untruths eventually filled 60 pages of single spaced typescript, which I sent to my excellent lawyer Michael Rubinstein and asked what I should do.

It was only years later that I realised that Thompson had been given the task of deliberately libelling me, in the hope of luring me into the High Court. The papers in the Public Record Office [now Britain’s “National Archives”] seem to make this plain. The Churchill family had guaranteed to indemnify him for his costs. In 1969 I instructed Rubinstein, Nash & Co to issue a writ. If that was the Churchill clique’s plan, it misfired.

To their fury, the book trade panicked and withdrew Thompson’s book from sale. The action proceeded slowly; after the setback of the February 1970 defeat in the PQ.17 libel action I had to husband every penny to fight the appeal. With no alternative but to shorten the front-line, I called off the libel suit against Carlos Thompson, so that interesting battle was never fought. As is apparent from the government documents now released, the real war was boiling up behind the scenes.

THOMPSON’S wife Lilli Palmer was in the dark about his real purpose, as was Rolf Hochhuth, who told me that he too was charmed by the actor’s first approaches. Later Lilli phoned Rolf despairingly to apologise, warning that whatever her husband’s assurances to the contrary he boded Rolf no good at all. Carlos had only recently discharged himself from a Nervenheilanstalt , a mental clinic, she said. This was the eccentric character that David Frost now elected to make his ally.

The TV personality had decided to devote his flagship programme Frost on Friday (and as things developed Frost on Saturday too) to destroying me personally. Frost had virtually carte blanche, as he had co-founded the consortium which had put together the winning London Weekend Television (LWT) franchise bid the year before. Having since then read the government files, I have little doubt that pressure was brought to bear on Frost and LWT.

For weeks the British newspapers had been clawing over the details of the Sikorski crash controversy, their letter columns filled with indignant and loyal letters from Churchill’s private staff, Sir John Colville , Sir Ian Jacobs , and Sir Hastings Ismay . Since October 1968 my book Accident was in the bookstores too. Frost’s producer telephoned to ask if I would take part in the Frost on Friday programme

on December 21, 1968 devoted both to Sikorski’s strange death and saturation bombing, the parallel motifs of Hochhuth’s Soldiers . Ken Tynan would be there too.

I naively suggested they invite Maurice Smith , the RAF “master bomber” at Dresden, and Sikorski’s Czech pilot, Edward Prchal , the only survivor of the crash, from California, and I provided their addresses. “Get on to the Imperial War Museum,” I added, warming to the idea.

“Borrow a Mae West lifejacket, and when the cameras are live produce it to Prchal and see if even in full daylight he can put it on, tie all the straps and inflate it in the seventeen seconds he had while his plane was taking off and crashing in the darkness off Gibraltar!” It would have been jolly good television, agreed the producer, phoning me back; but they had concluded it would be too costly to fly Prchal over.

Just before I left for the LWT studio that Friday evening, my publisher William Kimber rang. “Look, David, about the book and your advert in The Times ,” he pleaded. “Can we agree to bury the hatchet on that?

If either of us is asked about that, let’s agree now that we reply that we have no comment.” I was glad to oblige. Frost did raise the matter, and I deflected his question with a non-committal reply. IN the men’s room at the LWT studio I caught sight of a familiar Eastern European face above the stall next to mine. It was the Czech pilot, Prchal. This was the first indication I had that Frost’s team was playing with marked cards. It was an ambush, and from that moment it rolled like clockwork.

At a cocktail party some years later his floor manager enlightened me on some of the Frost Programme’s dirty tricks. The audience was not neutral; it was handpicked, loaded against one party or other — and that was not all. “The loudspeakers around the auditorium are connected to Frost’s table microphone, but not necessarily to yours. The gain on Frost’s microphone is greater than on his victim’s. It is more sensitive,” he explained.

When David Frost’s preferred guests come on, illuminated signs direct the audience: APPLAUSE . “When you came on, you get the other sign: SILENCE .” And so on. There was of course no sign of any Mae West life jacket. Had I been told that Prchal was coming, I would have brought one in myself. Wing Commander Maurice Smith was present, in the front row “ambush” slot. We exchanged handshakes, as I had always liked him.

At my suggestion, Douglas Martin had also been brought down from Birmingham, and was further back in the audience; he was the SOE wireless operator at Gibraltar, who had been looking out to sea from high up on the Rock that night in July 1943, and had witnessed the crash, and had seen a second figure climbing out of the top of the plane as it settled into the sea.

A floor technician brought in Carlos Thompson (” APPLAUSE “), carrying the attaché case we had seen in our drawing room in Maida Vale. It turned out to have concealed a hidden tape recorder, from which he played — to me totally unintelligible — snatches of our dialogue; but of course hidden tape recorders, and this dashing Argentine investigator, made it look as though something really sinister had been caught on tape. Frost wore an oafish grin.

It was clear that he had no intention of ambushing Prchal; going down that route was not the way to earn an OBE at all. He allowed Prchal to tell his moving story, and made no attempt to bring in the witnesses that we had assembled in the audience — in particular Douglas Martin. At his request, Rolf Hochhuth was waiting on a direct telephone in his Swiss home.

He was kept holding the line for half an hour until the intermission, then Frost casually asked me in his irritating nasal tones to go over to the phone and reassure Rolf that he would have his say after the interval. (He never got to speak, nor did Smith or Martin.) As I communicated Frost’s message in German to Rolf as bidden, an unseen boom-microphone snaked in overhead so that millions of English viewers could hear me talking to someone in that sinister foreign tongue.

Frost accused me of lying when I described my Polish interpreter as fervently anti-Soviet; he also said that I had lied when I remarked that Sir Laurence Olivier had been shown Rolf’s “bank safe” document; on a further matter, whether or not William Kimber, my publisher had discussed changes he was making to my book, he also accused me of lying. And Frost had not finished even then. Frost announced that he was going to have us all back for Frost on Saturday , too.

I was elated, as I thought I could come back the next day fully prepared and even bring that life jacket; but it turned out that LWT would tape the follow-up immediately. Since it was clear, when we resumed, what Frost was up to, I fought back with no holds barred. If I was going to go down, it would be with all guns blazing — like Bismarck.

When I got home, I told Pilar — who had watched the live Friday broadcast with mounting dismay — that she would see on Saturday that I had put up a good fight against the combined powers of David Frost and his company LWT. We watched the recorded broadcast in our little flat that Saturday evening. The sixteen million viewers thought that they were watching it live, which was just another of the deceptions practiced.

As the Frost theme music swelled at the end, and the credits rolled, I turned to Pilar: “As you see, all guns firing!”

But even as I spoke those words, there was David Frost was back on the screen: He was now live in the studios, it was Saturday evening, and he was wearing a different jacket from the night before to give the impression that we were still sitting next to him, and could have interrupted him had we wished. “Before we finish this evening’s programme,” he said in that sneering, adenoidal voice, glancing across to wgere viewers assumed I ws sitting at that moment, “I just wanted to say this.

Since last night’s programme, we have been inundated with messages from all over the United Kingdom, and I wanted just to mention a few. Sir Laurence Olivier has phoned us to say that at no time was he shown any document, as Mr Irving has claimed. Mr Irving’s Polish interpreter, Madame Lubienska, has denied that she is anti-Soviet. Mr William Kimber had also phoned us to say that all the changes that were made to his book were made with Mr Irving’s approval.

Frost paused with expert timing, and his voice took on a grating edge: “Most of the phone calls that we received last night however said the same thing about Mr Irving. He is just repeating the Nazi propaganda lie ” — he drawled, managing to get three syllables out of that single-syllable word — “that was first broadcast by Nazi propaganda minister Dr Joseph Goebbels a few hours after the plane crashed. Good night.” Then his theme music returned. THIS was dirty television.

For a few days I quietly fulminated, then I contacted William Kimber. “I thought that you and I had a private agreement,” I began, “that we would not wash dirty linen in public about the circumstances surrounding publication.” “I never contacted Frost in any way,” said Kimber in that airy voice of his. “I was surprised when he made that statement at the end of the programme.” Never phoned Frost?

Who was lying here?

I contacted Madame Lubienska. ” Am I anti-Soviet ?” she exclaimed. “I was held in a Soviet prison camp for years after the war. Judge for yourself. As for Mr Frost, I never spoke with him.” Sir Laurence Olivier confirmed that he, too, had made no attempt to contact the television personality; on the contrary, Frost’s secretary had phoned his, but he had declined any comment. Frost’s closing statements were lies from start to finish.

It was now that the inequities, inadequacies, of English law became evident. I contacted my friend Michael Rubinstein , my attorney, and suggested that Frost should apologise. “Are you formally instructing me?” asked Michael, and I said I was. He obtained a verbatim transcript, from which I have reproduced the words above. London Weekend Television was concerned, and rapidly offered some relief: they would broadcast an agreed retraction, and Frost himself would withdraw the remarks.

I was not asking for damages, although the steady erosion being done to my reputation by these devices was palpable. Weeks passed while Rubinstein negotiated with the television company’s lawyers on the wording of the apologies. They reminded him that he had also acted for them in the past — a conflict of interest perhaps; he could continue only as an intermediary.

The LWT lawyers skilfully drew things out, and at the end of three months withdrew their offer, and left it to me to decide whether to sue or not. Rubinstein advised against. Libel verdicts are essentially subjective, he warned. Frost would be a popular figure in the eyes of any jury, while I was not. London Weekend Television did agree to pay the legal costs. Rubinstein, and his capable assistant, Maxie Alexander advised me to shut up and move on. I almost did.

Against Rubinstein’s strong advice, I prepared a pamphlet putting the verbatim transcript of Frost’s broadcast words beside the denials of all those concerned that they had spoken to him in any way. First I ran it past Rubinstein. He was horrified; it would be a clear libel, he advised, malice was obvious, and I would have no defence. I had my dander up, however: I was like H. W. Wicks , but unlike him I would keep my grievance under control.

I had several thousand copies of the pamphlet printed, and week after week we methodically sent them out to everybody who we assumed mattered to David Frost and his production company — to every television and radio critic, every producer, and every senior executive. I do not know what effect this operation had — I codenamed it Operation Toast. One newspaper did dare to pick up the story.

The Daily Express mentioned it in a William Hickey item; it added that Frost’s lawyers had warned them not even to hint at the content of the leaflet. So I knew it had hit home. Soon after, Frost vanished from British television screens for some years. Perhaps the British public was tired of him. He crossed the Atlantic, to re-establish himself in the United States.

Years later, having acquired some of the graces and decencies that go with statesmanship, he restored himself in the favour of the British viewing public. The Government awarded him the Order of the British Empire in 1970 and he was knighted in 1993, with a personal fortune now estimated at over two hundred million pounds. EARLY in 1969 I asked the prime minister, Harold Wilson , to reopen the 1943 R.A.F. Court of Inquiry, and Woodrow Wyatt , MP, tabled a parliamentary Question.

The relevant government files reveal that in February 1969 the Intelligence Co-ordinator provided a background memorandum for the cabinet secretary Sir Burke Trend to forward to Wilson. This concluded that my book had conveyed as clearly as was possible without risking a libel suit that the Liberator’s pilot, Edward Prchal , had assisted in the plane’s sabotage.”

He [David Irving] has clearly done a good deal of research among people involved in the Gibraltar arrangements and the Court of Inquiry and among United States and Polish emigre archives.”

In advising the prime minister to refute the sabotage allegations most robustly, Sir Burke warned him however to temper his remarks with caution since, not only were High Court writs flying, but “the report of the contemporary R.A.F. court of inquiry contains some weaknesses which, if it were published, could be embarrassingly exploited.”

The 1943 inquiry did not “exclude the possibility of doubt” on the possibility of sabotage, explained the cabinet secretary: The shadow of doubt is certainly there; and a skilful counsel could make good use of it. Irving, in his book Accident , points to the weaknesses in the report, a copy of which he has certainly seen and may possess; and if challenged he might publish it.

Anything that the prime minister might say must therefore be consistent with what might need to be admitted if the inquiry’s report later came into the public domain.

Meanwhile, as Wilson was informed, the Intelligence community was limiting its response to providing “unattributable” and “discreet” help and “encouragement” to those anxious to defend the late Sir Winston Churchill, notably his grandson, Mr Winston Churchill Jr., his wartime “secret circle,” and the “rather enigmatic” Argentine author Carlos Thompson whom Randolph Churchill had commissioned to write a book.

It was therefore hoped to destroy both myself and the playwright Hochhuth with legal proceedings (only Hochhuth was eventually sued). “Irving,” Harold Wilson was advised, “has called for a re-opening of the R.A.F. Court of Inquiry which he (rightly) claims is permissible under R.A.F. Rules.”

Sir Burke Trende warned the prime minister: “It would be most unwise to agree, not least because of the weaknesses in the proceedings of the [1943] Court of Inquiry.”* MANY years later, in October 1981, Carlos Thompson aka Juan Carlos Mundin Schaffter surfaced again, acting very oddly. He came to our street door in Duke Street — something told me not to allow him inside — and warned me to silence about all this, if I valued my life.

He hesitated briefly, then opened his bag to reveal a revolver, and he produced a medallion in a leather case which identified him, he said, as a major in the Mossad. Who can say now if either was real?

I closed the front door on him at once, perhaps the wisest thing I have ever done, and I never saw him again. He died by his own hand in his native Buenos Aires in 1990. He shot himself, perhaps with that very gun. * Sir Burke Trend to Harold Wilson; with attached Memo by Intelligence Co-ordinator, top secret [Feb 1969]: ‘Irving is a young and prolific British historian, with known Fascist leanings.

He has published other books on the war which are critical of British leadership and tend to show the Germans in a good light.’ And: ‘There are various grounds for suspecting, but no real proof, that Hochhuth’s and Irving’s activities are part of a long-term Soviet “disinformation” operation against the West’ (PREM.13/2644). © 2010

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