David Irving |
Documents on the International Campaign for Real History
Posted Monday, January 28, 2008
© Focal Point 2008
Now I recall that she once said, 'Dave, you'd be much nicer if you stopped drinking coffee.' I did, but wasn't.
January 21, 2008 (Monday)
Windsor (England)UP at 8 am A reader writes: "Just the few extracts of your memoirs that you have released on your site are enough to convince anyone that not only is the content fascinating, but the style is especially engaging." He asks when they will be complete.
I reply: "Publishers are fighting shy at present and I am reluctant to show them more than a sample chapter. I am patient."
I ask B. to report as soon as she decently can. She is at the RMH since nine am. "Fingers and thumbs crossed."
She replies at 12:10 "Have found a quiet corner with a comfy sofa. Quite a beautiful old building."
I chat with her for a long time, settling her mind.
January 22, 2008 (Tuesday)
Windsor (England)
I DRIVE to London with Tete at 3 pm. First Chiswick, Post Office, bank, and ironmonger, then on to Fortnum & Mason for tea with Tete and his friend Gina Thomas of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. We have a good talk. She has been with the FAZ for twenty years, and we have many mutual friends. These do not include her fellow-journalist Eva Menasse (right) -- we agree that Eva is a superb writer, but G. now tells me of how when the Lipstadt Trial began in January 2000, Eva pushed her aside, although a newcomer, and demanded to cover the courtroom proceedings herself (Eva is a Jewess, I believe).
Her first trial report to the newspaper was, I recall, well-written, personal, and not unfavourable (she had come round to Duke Street for an interview en famille). But for some unknown reason she did an immediate 180-degree volte face after that and her reporting on me became progressively so shrewish that at the time of the 2006 Vienna trial she was shrilly demanding in the Süddeutsche Zeitung at least a five year sentence for me (a contempt of court which in England would have seen her clapped into Holloway, if not Pentonville).
6:30 pm I collect Jessica from Sloane Street, and we go to Prezzo's for supper -- her suggestion. She is very quiet and collected, and after a while asks me if I know too. We talk about Josephine's first accident, and the letters she wrote me apologising, bless her heart and God rest her soul. Jessica asks if I still have the letters; I say the file is among those returned to me on October 16 last year by the authorities, but I could not bear to read them again. She is too well bred to comment, perhaps even embarrassed by it all. I tell her that [...] is in God's hands now. "I don't think there is a God," retorts Jessica, and for once I do not try to argue.
We soon resume our normal chatter, and I drive over to Piccadilly to pick up Tete, and park at the roadside; after a while, at 8:50 pm, he phones to say he has been invited to the Russian dinner at the Royal Academy, and can I hang around until eleven pm?
Under the circumstances I am quietly furious. I tell him ich bin mit den Nerven ganz herunter, and I drive back to Windsor, realising I shall have to return to the West End later to fetch him.
9:45 pm I phone B. for another long talk. ... Some time after ten o'clock, Tete phones again, can I now collect him? I say I am back home in Windsor. Okay, he says nonchalantly, then phone me when you get back here in Piccadilly. I get there around 11:30 pm. Back at Windsor around midnight-thirty. "I've cost you a day's work," he observes, rightly. A poor, poor day.
January 23, 2008 (Wednesday)
Windsor (England)To the Eton post office. How White this little town still is!
Ten pm a half hour talk with B. again. She heard Jessica chatting on the phone with her friends this evening, and laughing happily. I tell her that the laughter of a child is an antidote for everything.
January 25, 2008 (Friday)
Windsor - Rossendale, Lancashire - Windsor (England)TWO swans now regularly cruise past the paddock. At first the water was so low that I just saw their heads moving along the edge of the lawn, like two white pocket-handkerchiefs, but the recent rains have flooded the brook. The gardener tells me that swans pair up for life (like ostriches, and some humans).
At midday I set out for Lancashire, and arrive at the home of tonight's host in Rawtenstall at five pm. A score of his friends and mine turn up, and a quiet and successful discussion evening is the result. He has the original Berghof phone book, and Adolf Hitler's eye-glasses and case; I give him two of Hitler's eye-examination reports for verification purposes. Somebody brings his Potsdam Conference china tea set, somebody else has an SS tea cup and some silver flatware of the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler; it is a bit like an Antiques Road Show, special edition.
I set out home from Lancashire at 10:55 pm and make very good time all the way back to Windsor, with one twenty-minute stop after I feel myself falling asleep in the usual frightening motorway, middle-of-the-night, manner. I arrive [home] at 2:35 am, and work on until three or four am.
January 26, 2008 (Saturday)
Windsor (England)I TELL Jessica I have some cash and she can shop for clothes in Windsor tomorrow, but only stuff that will please her mother's eye, "not Chelsea stuff."
She misunderstands, and says, "Yes, Chelsea stuff."
Rather sadly I recharge the accumulator of the camcorder, which has not been used for five years or more. We must take some film now while we can.
2:23 pm I phone Jessica with good news -- I have found her new belt -- and then B., a rather surreal conversation.
Into London at three pm, and pick up Jessica at four on the dot. Annette V., a voice from twenty years ago, phones as I drive down Beauchamp Place, and I call her back when we get back out to Windsor. She reminds me that twenty years ago I did not drink coffee. I had completely forgotten that. Now I recall that she once said, "Dave, you'd be much nicer if you stopped drinking coffee." I did, but wasn't. I used to ask her to brew some coffee first thing when she came to work, so I could at least smell the aroma.
Hear David Irving speak in British cities. Register interest
Next cities London and Halifax: buffet and talk 7-10 pmSomebody emails me: "Recently I uploaded some of your books onto the online libraryarchive.org. I assumed it would be safe to do this, since all of the pdfs were from your website itself."
The server has now blocked his website, and I confirm: "You really did (and do) need my permission to upload my books anywhere other than on my own website. I am afraid I cannot give this permission. Thank you, but please do not do it."
January 27, 2008 (Sunday)
Windsor - London - Windsor (England)THE swans are back, the two of them, still a team. I wonder what happens when one swan dies?
Lunch with Jessica at the [inn], and I give her a hundred pounds from my Lancashire money to buy clothes in Windsor, repeating "not Chelsea stuff," an injunction which she of course disregards. Back home (after she returns to the café an hour later than instructed) at four pm.
I spend all day scanning B.'s tin box of early photographs of Jessica and me; it is ... a happy exercise. I call Jessica over to look at some of the earliest pictures.
B. talks about moving in with her a German girl friend she must have made recently... It is the first I have heard of this friend; I just hope she's not another shifty charlatan like "Susan Davis" -- perhaps a fake name -- and her husband, who appeared from nowhere, told her they were Jews, and befriended her while I was in Vienna prison, and stole thousands of pounds from her.
The Sunday Times runs an article today about another Oxford Union controversy -- the Jewish candidate for president is outraged because she lost the election, and has called in lawyers. The newspaper refers to me as "the rightwing historian", which seems to be a possible augury that open season is ending. Otherwise, this has not been a week I would want to repeat.
No Mercy Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung journalist Eva Menasse shows Rolf Hochhuth 'Keine Gnade' for having defended Mr Irving | in German; and (in English) Mr Irving's commentary on this journalist and flibbertigibbet
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