Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day018.13 Last-Modified: 2000/07/24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If it is a natural break, let us do that, but I think this afternoon let us move on beyond bundle E and you can come back to that, whatever turns out to be a . P-109 convenient moment. Shall we adjourn now and return at a quarter to two. (1.45 p.m.) (Luncheon Adjournment) (Professor Evans, recalled. Cross-Examined by Mr Irving, continued.) MR IRVING: Thank you, my Lord. There is one minor point I wanted to pick up from remarks that Mr Rampton made shortly towards the end where he referred to black servants. My Lord, you may remember the phrase. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not remember. MR IRVING: The phrase he used is black servants and this may be indicative of the mind cast on that side of the courtroom. I certainly do not regard blacks as servants. They were my equals. I employed these Pakistanis, Indians Sri Lankans and so on as research assistants and personal assistants. They were not servants in any kind of menial way. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. MR IRVING: Witness, you may have heard me described by Professor Donald Watt and others as Britain's most disliked historian. Does that surprise you? A. Could you direct me to where he actually said that? Q. Very well. We can move straight on to the next question. You do not like me, do you? A. I have no personal feelings about you at all, Mr Irving. . P-110 Q. I think we have seen this morning and from a number of your remarks that you dislike what I write, you dislike what I stand for, you dislike what you perceive my views to be. Is this correct? A. I do not have any person feelings at all. I was simply asked to write a report, which I have done, about your writings and speeches. Q. Well ---- A. I have tried to be as objective as possible. Q. Yes of course. A. And to leave any personal feelings I might possibly have out of it. Q. There are a number of remarks which are now a matter of record on this morning's transcript, which indicate that you hold strong personal views which are antipathetic towards me. A. Such as? Q. Well, they are a matter of record and I am sure that the court is familiar with them and this is why there was a rather astonished chuckle when you said that you held no views about me from those who had been listening to you this morning. You are aware of the fact of course, having written an expert report, that you have a duty to impartiality? A. Absolutely. That is described in the last paragraph of my report. . P-111 Q. Precisely. I was beginning to express astonishment of that fact and that is why I asked the question because I had the impression from this morning's answers to the questions that you were averse to answering questions and that you held something bordering between distaste and loathing towards me and the books I write or the views that you perceive me to hold? A. Not at all. But it is the fact that I do find it very difficult to answer questions about reports written by other people. I am here to answer questions about my own report. Q. You say that, when you went to the British Museum Reading Room, you asked for a copy of my book Hitler's War, and it was not in the public shelves. Is that correct? A. No. It was on the public shelves. Q. It was on the public shelves? A. Well, I mean as I say, it was available to everybody who had access to the British library. Q. I remind you of your words? A. That is the new British Library. Q. I remind you of your words in your report where you say that the 1991 edition of Hitler's War can only be read at the desk in the Rare Books Room. What justification did they offer for that? A. Well, none at all. I am not responsible for their classification. I have to say that, when I asked to read . P-112 it, the library assistant in a somewhat astonished manner said to me that it had to be read on the desk reserved for pornography. MR JUSTICE GRAY: What is the relevance of that to your report? A. I say it in my report. MR IRVING: Page 15 of his report, my Lord, paragraph 154. I am not relying on the pornography aspect, my Lord, as your Lordship will appreciate. A. It is an extremely minor and peripheral point. I am not suggesting for a moment that it was pornographic, but it is a matter of fact that, when I consulted it, that is where I had to read it. Q. Do you infer from that rather curious episode that what has been a very widely reviewed and widely praised work of history should have been placed by the museum in a reserved section where it can only be read with special application. Could that possibly be the result of some kind of campaign or endeavour by third parties, do you think? A. Let me say first of all that I do not think that your 1991 -- correct me if I am wrong -- edition of Hitler's War has been widely reviewed and widely praised. Secondly, I have no idea why I had to read it on that particular desk. Let me say if it helps you ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not bothered about that at all, Professor. I am just puzzled why you included it in your . P-113 report. A. Little bit of light relief, my Lord, to be honest. I thought it was a minor detail that struck me as being rather odd, that I just put in to make the report a little bit more readable. I do not attach any weight or importance to it. If it helps you at all, I really do not understand why they have done it. I cannot speculate on why they have done it. It did not seem to me worth pursuing the matter. I could read it. Anybody can read it. It is not restricted. MR IRVING: You appreciate that it must have taken an objective action by someone, a positive step by someone, to recommend that the book should be taken from the normal shelves and placed into a reserved limited access section? A. It is not really limited access, to be honest. It is just that you have to read it in a certain place. My experience of the British Library's policy on these matters is somewhat haphazard. It is not terribly consistent. Q. Do you have page 15? MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have read it. A. I suggest that, if you wish to pursue this, you should do so with the British Library. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think we have pursued it as far as it is worth pursuing. MR IRVING: I am going to pursue it to the next sentence, my . P-114 Lord, which is: "Secondly, Irving has published a number of articles mainly in the Journal of Historical Review". Do you still stand by that statement? A. Yes. That follows on from the material on which this report is based, consisting in the first place of Irving's published books. Q. Are you aware that I have not published one article in the Journal of Historical Review? A. I am sorry, Mr Irving. Your journals are widely available in the Journal of Historical Review. I have read the Journal of Historical Review and there are many articles of yours there. Q. Are you referring to transcripts of talks that I have delivered which have then been transcribed by the Institute and then published? A. They are there as articles, indeed, yes. MR RAMPTON: I was just saying to my junior that, if this line of cross-examination continues without Mr Irving's revealing to the witness the full extent of the way in which those articles are published in the Journal of Historical Review, I am going to intervene. MR IRVING: I think that my question, as it was put, was quite proper, my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: So do I, and re-examination is always an opportunity to follow up these things. MR IRVING: In other words, you do accept that I have never . P-115 written an article for the Journal of Historical Review, it is however correct that they have published transcripts in the way that learned journals also do of people's talks and lectures? A. I do not accept that the Journal of Historical Review is a learned journal. Q. I did not say so, of course. A. But I would have thought that they would have obtained your permission to put the transcripts there and that you would have had the opportunity to revise them before they went in there, and that therefore you were agreeable to their appearing there as articles. Q. Yes. On page 17 you refer to various bones of contention that you are going to pick in the first paragraph, the fourth line, to Irving's use of the evidence of Hitler's Adjutants. Undoubtedly I am going to be cross- examined on this matter, I believe so. I do not really want to go into very much detail about that until we come to it in the appropriate part of your report, but you do attach great importance to the fact, do you not, that you think I made a wrong use of what these members of Hitler's private staff told me? MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure that you are going to be cross-examined because my understanding is that---- MR RAMPTON: I said that on the whole I did not think it terribly likely, but I did say, if I was going to, I would . P-116 mention it. There may be just a couple of points. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I thought I could short circuit this. MR RAMPTON: I am certainly not going to do it at any length because I do not believe I need to. MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are right, Mr Irving, it is part of the case. I thought it was not but it is. MR IRVING: It appears to be in a kind of limbo where it might be sprung on me at a later date. When we come to that point in Professor Evans' expert report, than in that case I shall have to deal with it seriatim. Can I address your attention to page 19 of your report, Professor Evans? Half way down the page, at the end of that paragraph, paragraph 161, you conclude by saying: "We have not suppressed any occasion on which Irving has used accepted and legitimate methods of historical research, exposition and interpretation. There were none." That is a very sweeping statement it make, is it not? A. Yes. I should qualify that by saying there wee none in the material we examined. Q. None at all? I have never used historical material in the proper manner? A. Not in the material we examined, no. Q. I can see his Lordship frowning. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am just puzzled by that. What material did you examine? It seems to me you cannot have known what to go to unless you have looked at the whole lot. . P-117 A. In the cases that we examined. I explain in the introduction to this report. Clearly we had 18 months to go through 30 years' of Mr Irving's work and so it was not possible to go through the whole lot in its entirety. So we had to be selective. I explain in the report the principles on which we selected the material, which was not going for the weak points but trying to go for his strongest arguments, and in those areas we did not find occasions where he used accepted and legitimate methods of historical research, exposition and interpretation, taking the three things together as a whole. Q. It is a bit tortuous because really what you are saying is that the areas you have selected for criticism are not areas where you would praise Mr Irving? A. No, that is right, though I did not know that in advance. Q. Who told you which passages to go for, as it were? A. No. Well, that is to say, as I explain here, I decided obviously to look at the question of Holocaust denial and whether it was legitimate to ----
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