Irving v. Lipstadt
The libel action that put history itself on trial. Eighty-eight days in Court 73 of the Royal Courts of Justice, London.
On a grey January morning in 2000, the historian David Irving rose from his seat in Court 73 of London's Royal Courts of Justice and began, without legal counsel, to argue one of the most extraordinary libel cases in British legal history. His target: the American academic Deborah Lipstadt and her publisher Penguin Books, whose 1993 work Denying the Holocaust had branded him a dangerous falsifier of the historical record.
What followed over the next three months was not merely a defamation trial but an unprecedented forensic examination of the methods, motives and integrity of a working historian. Irving, representing himself against a team led by Richard Rampton QC, was forced to defend his entire body of work — every footnote, every translation, every inference drawn from decades of archival research — before a judge who would ultimately weigh the evidence without a jury.
The case turned on a single, devastating question: had Irving systematically distorted the historical record to exonerate Adolf Hitler and minimise the crimes of the Third Reich? The defence assembled a battery of expert witnesses — among them Richard Evans, Christopher Browning, and Robert Jan van Pelt — whose reports ran to thousands of pages and dissected Irving's published works line by line.
On 11 April 2000, Mr Justice Gray delivered his judgment. The archive presented here — comprising court documents, transcripts, press coverage, personal correspondence and diary entries from the period — constitutes the most comprehensive publicly available record of a trial that reshaped the boundaries of historical debate.
Trial Transcripts
Complete verbatim transcripts of proceedings in the Queen's Bench Division, Day 1 (11 January 2000) through Day 32 (15 March 2000).
Expert Reports
Reports submitted by expert witnesses including Richard Evans, Christopher Browning, Robert Jan van Pelt, and Peter Longerich — the forensic backbone of the defence case.
Witness Statements
Written statements submitted to the court by witnesses for both sides.
The Judgment
Mr Justice Gray's judgment delivered 11 April 2000, and related legal documents.
Action Reports
Regular bulletins on the progress of the legal action, published during the trial period.
“It appeared to me that the correct and just decision on those issues is as follows …”
— Mr Justice Gray, Judgment, 11 April 2000
Court Records & Legal Documents
Legal submissions, pre-trial correspondence, and records from the proceedings.
Articles & Analysis
Extended articles, essays, and analytical pieces examining the trial and its broader implications.
The Traditional Enemies of Free Speech
24 Feb 2002Real History and Faking Holocaust Memoirs
16 Mar 2008David Irving v Penguin & Lipstadt — Jan 1995
1 Jan 1995David Irving’s Radical’s Diary, 1999 — Dec 1941
1 Dec 1941Index: Lipstadt Trial Documents
20 Aug 2011Temporary archive of older links
14 Jul 2009Dr Goebbels and the Liquidation of the Jews
27 Mar 1942Censorship by its Traditional Enemies
29 May 2005The Darkest Hour
20 Jun 2002The defeat of the denierDanuta Kean reports on how Penguin p
21 Apr 2000Real History, Deborah Lipstadt, Adolf Hitler and Diego Garcia
23 Mar 2005Documents on David Irving’s early clashes with Professor Deborah Lipstadt
9 Nov 1994Diary Entries
Selections from A Radical's Diary covering the trial period — a first-person account of the proceedings.