Diary: August 10, 2004

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He shook my hand, without force or conviction. The name meant nothing to him any more.

August
10, 2004 (Tuesday)
Key
West, Florida

AN INCORRIGIBLE friend writes overnight from
Nevada apologizing for having got it wrong: “I prophesied that your
,000 reward offer would never be published. I can’t believe that the Judenpresse was dumb enough to do it,” and he adds further unprintable comments about what will happen if “some courageous
Kiwi cop” actually finds out who did it — i.e., desecrating the two cemeteries.

In another message he suggests (no doubt tongue in cheek): “Follow your $1,000 reward with the coup de grâce, an announcement that you now
believe in the holocaust. (Find out exactly what you are supposed to believe about the holocaust first.) See if they can keep you out then.”

Duly noted. An alternative would be to go the
Madeleine Albright route, but that would be really pushing the envelope.

A daughter reminds me: “Hi Daddy — I am in the
South of Spain at the moment, near Cadiz on a two week holiday. Today, by the way, is Daniella’s 1st birthday.” Um, that would be one of the grandchildren.

The folks at the National Press Club in New
Zealand have begun the process of issuing a formal invitation, as they inform me. Seems that some guys down there have guts after all.

I send this teaser to a number of media people in New
Zealand:

I hear there was a report on the TV
news yesterday that a skinhead is wanted for
questioning about the Jewish grave’s destruction
in Wellington.

Yes, we can expect all sorts of spurious reports about “skinheads” etc., now to pop up and … die away. Hence my reward offer, which has completely bouleversé the traditional enemy of free speech. As for
[Deputy Prime Minister] Michael
Cullen, [. . .] I hear that he was interviewed in a parliamentary corridor yesterday and he repeated that the law is clear and that to admit me would require a dispensation. Not true.

He repeated his comments on the radio that my views are “vomit making”. I shall mention that point next time I speak, which is thank goodness now quite often, on NZ radio. He obviously has not read even one of my books. Yet he vomits easily.

I suggest that these journalists now ask the Hon
Phil Goff, NZ’s foreign minister, who was speaking in favor of my entry, whether he has had a chance to look at the copy of “Churchill’s
War”, vol. ii: “Triumph in Adversity” which I sent him. “I thought it would be salutary if the decision-makers actually had a chance to look at my works.” “Hint: Churchill’s War, vol. ii: ‘A vivid portrait accompanied by much striking and original analysis.

It is certainly no mere repeat of the usual hagiography. Once again David Irving shows himself a master of documentation. ‘– Prof.
John Erickson, University of Edinburgh, April
30, 2001; ‘His knowledge of World War Two is unparalleled’ — Mr. Justice Gray, April 11,
2000

I shall shortly repeat the process and
send copies of this and other works, so far as I
have them down here in Florida, to other leading
Cabinet ministers. Just to make it that much
tougher for them as mid September and my arrival
approaches. Will the corridors of power in
Wellington be flooded with vomit? Will you all
need Wellington boots? I fancy not.

I AM sorry to see that Bernard Levin,
right, has died. He launched a crusade against me in the early 1990s, at a time before the
Internet gave anybody who could write
HTML the chance to strike back and defend themselves.

He published four half-page articles in the space of as many months attacking me in The
Times, which stolidly refused to print my responses, however brief.

I was never on good terms with that paper. When they earlier (1983) fell for the fake “Hitler
Diaries,” which I exposed,
I reflected that it could not have happened to nicer guys. They had had their knives into me ever since.

After one of Levin’s weightier attacks in May
1990 — which I shall eventually get round to posting in my newspaper archive — I wrote a letter to The Times: my diary entries for those years —

May
14, 1990 London. The Times ran an
article attacking me by Bernard Levin. I drafted
a hilarious response to him, but decided to
spike it. (Its last para quoted Lord Mountbatten
about not getting into a pissing match with a
skunk; not that I was comparing Levin with a
skunk — I would hate to be accused of
anti-skunkism. Decided on balance that a
dignified silence was preferable.)

As said, I had second thoughts about sending it off, and it remained unpublished.

July
19, 1990 London. Sally phoned, reporting that Bernard Levin has taken another swipe at me in today’s The Times, saying I denied that the Holocaust happened, and am a greater admirer of Hitler than ever. I draft a letter.

May
11, 1992 Munich 5 p.m. Phoned Sally: she said The Times has another vicious attack on me today by Bernard Levin. God, he’s going really nuts.

Bernard
Levin, veteran columnist of The Times, published a fourth hate-filled, half-page attack on me. This time the newspaper finally allows a truncated reply. “He [Levin] devoutly wishes that I would go to Austria and be thrown in jail for life for my (to him) inconvenient views. I was in Austria, researching, on Sunday
[May 10] despite an arrest warrant issued in 1989 . . .”

August
28, 1995 (Monday) London Bank holiday, I cleaned corners and crannies of kitchen floor with a scalpel. Fifteen years’ accumulated filth. Tempted to mail it to Bernard Levin for his next column.

On reflection, most of my best works, ever since
I wrote an editorial to The Phoenix at
Imperial College in 1959 entitled “The First
Cuckoos of Spring” (about our beloved rector,
Sir Patrick Linstead), have remained unpublished. A treasure-trove of pirate gems, if I might so make so bold as immodestly to say. Now there is a Levin-like sentence.!

Levin gradually faded from the pages of The
Times. He earned the obloquy of the Great
Unwashed Left by being among the first journalists to decamp from Fleet Street into Fortress Wapping, the fortified newspaper-complex secretly set up by
Rupert Murdoch (one of his most brilliant moves, which effectively smashed the powerful
British print and typesetters union NATSOPA and emasculated its perfectly-coiffed figurehead,
Brenda somebody (now Lady Brenda,

under Tony
Blair: I trust that too much will not be read into the last phrase).

Oh gosh, these sentences are becoming more convoluted with each paragraph. I hope I am not going the way of Bernard Levin now.

Memorable images of him will survive: During a one-on-one interview on one of the early live David Frost television programs, That Was the Week that
Was, Levin deflated that pompous, adenoidal pratt by taking a realistic water pistol from his jacket, and squirting water at Frost’s face each time he said something daft. Get out of that, if you’re on live TV.

I bumped into Levin four or five years ago, in the Sketchley’s Cleaners in Marylebone High Street.
He came shuffling in; I recognized him and stuck out a paw to shake. “David Irving,” I said with a conciliatory smile. “You have written, uh, once or twice about me.” He shook my hand, without force or conviction. The name meant nothing to him any more.

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