David Irving
David John Cawdell Irving (born 24 March 1938) is an English writer and Holocaust denier, who specialises in the military and political history of World War II, with a focus on Nazi Germany. He is the author of 30 books on the subject, including The Destruction of Dresden (1963), Hitler's War (1977), Uprising! (1981), Churchill's War (1987), and Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich (1996).
His work on Nazi Germany became controversial because of his sympathy for the Third Reich, antisemitism and racism. He has associated with far right and neo-Nazi causes, famously during his student days seconding British Union of Fascists founder Oswald Mosley in a University College London debate on immigration. He has been described as "the most skillful preacher of Holocaust denial in the world today".
Irving's reputation as an historian was widely discredited after he brought an unsuccessful libel case against the American historian Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books. The English court found that Irving was an active Holocaust denier, antisemite, and racist, who "associates with right-wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism", and that he had "for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence".
Read more about David Irving: Early Life, Student Years, The Destruction of Dresden, Author, Racism and Antisemitism, Persona Non Grata, Reception By Historians
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“I am as unfit for any practical purpose—I mean for the furtherance of the world’s ends—as gossamer for ship-timber; and I, who am going to be a pencil-maker to-morrow, can sympathize with God Apollo, who served King Admetus for a while on earth.”
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