March 18, 2003 (Tuesday),
London

Up at 9:20 AM. I had written on January 8 to Duncan Sandys Jr requesting access to the late Lord Sandys' papers which are "open" in the Churchill archives, in these terms:

"For my work on the third volume of Churchill's life, I would like to consult a file of correspondence between Mr Duncan Sandys and Churchill 1944-1945, which is in the Churchill College archives. The file is already marked as open, but needs your general consent, I believe. There may also be other items falling in this category which I would like to consult. Duncan Sandys Sr provided major assistance to me already in 1963 when I wrote the book The Mare's Nest, about the German V-weapons. I would be happy to send you a complimentary copy of vol. ii if it would interest you."

Today, over two months later, he e-mails me refusing!

"The executors of Lord Duncan-Sandys's estate have considered your request for access to his papers and have decided not to grant it on this occasion."

Apart from the Allen Dulles papers at Princeton, many, many years ago, this is the only occasion on which I have been refused access to a collection of papers in a public archive.

I reply:

"I am sure that the late Duncan Sandys (Lord Sandys) would strongly disapprove this decision. As the executors may be aware from his papers he gave me the greatest possible assistance for my book The Mare's Nest in 1967, which was serialized by The Sunday Telegraph and Der Spiegel. He subsequently invited me to his receptions and cocktail parties. On one occasion he personally escorted me round the then secret Underground War Cabinet Rooms! However, the decision is theirs and I shall ensure that it is suitably highlighted in the introduction to the third volume when published."

March 19, 2003 (Wednesday),
London

The German Federal Archives today returned to me, at their own expense, the David Irving Collection from the Bundesarchiv, a big pallet of boxes. We have to pay £200 Customs charges. My boxes of papers have returned after ten years. On July 3, 1993, the day they banned me from the archives building in Koblenz "in the interests of the German people," they had to undertake to return to me the half-ton of historical documents and papers I had collected and donated to them over the previous thirty years.

In the evening I settle down to scrutinise the diary of the British Second Army Defence Company for May 1945, covering the arrest and alleged suicide of Heinrich Himmler. As I anticipated, there is the clearest possible evidence that the page covering that event has been removed and retyped on the same typewriter but by a different typist.

Remarkable that nobody else has spotted that (just as none of the conformist historians ever spotted that two of the most incriminating pages of Himmler's famous speeches at Posen in October 1943 and in May 1944 had been removed and retyped by another hand).

What can that mean? Well, there are no entries between May 20 and May 23, 1945, the date of Himmler's mysterious death; and since other sources indicate clearly that Himmler's arrest was May 21, not May 23 as later claimed, it may mask what was happening to him on the missing two days.

Image above: David Irving in the British public archives, March 2003

March 20, 2003 (Thursday),
London

Lawyer Peter Laskey informs me at 10:32 AM:

Penguin Books Ltd and Deborah Lipstadt: I have this morning received notification from the Civil Appeals Office that the permission application has been refused by Dyson LJ [Lord Justice]. . .

Counsel Adrian Davies says this refusal is monstrous, as the law is quite plain. As before, I am entitled to apply in open court for this negative decision to be overturned, and I shall. We have seven days to give notice of this, and it is good that I signed 2,300 letters to my transatlantic supporters last week, as we are going to need every penny for these last yards of this final mile.

Television news coverage this evening shows "Iraqi prisoners" surrendering to a British soldier: two prisoners come toward the Tommy; while they are still some distance away he shouts at them in English, "Drop to your knees" (They comply). "Turn round and face the other way." (They comply). Amazing, how many Iraqi peasants have a fluent understanding of English, and spoken in a northern British accent which even I sometimes can't understand. The BBC cautiously states that the film has been supplied by the Ministry of Defence.

Needless to say our brainless TV commentators don't ask the obvious questions. But the television coverage also throws up other baffling phenomena: the bombing of Baghdad, vivid and criminal, is spectacular, literally a gigantic fireworks display. Military gentlemen to whom I talk agree with me that the weapons appear to have been loaded with chemical combinations designed to produce maximum flash, and large, oily mushroom clouds -- the kind of expertise that special effects men in Hollywood are well known for. The bombload are designed in other words for their televisual effect.

The daylight brings confirmation confirms that actual damage to the big buildings is relatively modest, with individual rooms of ministerial buildings taken out, but nothing like the devastation that the RAF's big 4,000- and 8,000-pound "blockbusters" of WW2 caused in Berlin.

Incidentally, we repeatedly see the flash of the missiles detonating three miles away, and we hear the simultaneous sound effect. Uh, shouldn't the wallop take about fifteen seconds to travel to the camera's microphone? I am mildly baffled by that one.

March 22, 2003 (Saturday),
London

Big anti-war demonstration down marches Piccadilly this afternoon. I walk with Jessica down Down Street and take a couple of pictures of the huge throng, from next to the defunct Tube station; but there are isolated shouts of "It's Irving. Nazi Scum!" and we make a dignified return to the abode. It seems that that Far Left have captured control of what was in February a genuine middle-English protest movement.

In the evening, Jessica, 9, crowns a day of perfect behaviour by deciding on her own initiative to write a letter to president George Bush, telling him to stop the war against Iraq, and saying she cannot stand the screams of the children who are being bombed. A real angel. She even adds words of criticism for B-Liar (Tony Blair). Loud chuckles from Benté, as she reads it, and much pride from me, and I persuade Jessica to make a Xerox before it vanishes into its envelope.

I dictate the 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue address to Jessica ('What is the correct Zip code?' she asks), and she puts a picture of the London anti-war demonstration into the envelope too, for the President's edification.

I tell her that many years ago Josephine, may God rest her soul, wrote as a child to President Reagan to protest at the poor quality of American TV programmes flooding onto British screens.