London, March 9, 1990

Right on

THE opening up of East Germany has put a new spring into the step of the controversial Right-wing historian David Irving, who has found a ready audience in Dresden for his claim that the bombing of the city was one of history's gravest war crimes.

Irving, now at the end of a lecture tour across Europe, has distributed 300 copies of his book about the bombing in Dresden, whose citizens, he says, are thoroughly confused by recent developments and "are like a huge family of ducklings who have lost their mummy and daddy."

He uses an equally curious image to describe his oppo-nents in the German press, who "hooted with laughter" when he claimed, in October that reunification would take place within a year. "It didn't surprise me," snorts Irving. "The German press has all the horizon of a lavatory lid." 

[Speaking at his Berlin press conference on October 3, 1989, Mr Irving had predicted to the astonished journalists that Germany would be reunited in twelve months. The Berlin Wall was still standing at that time. Germany was formally reunited on October 3, 1990.]