Irving at the Oxford Union

Monday, 26th November 2007

Of course, any mention of this story is simply playing into the hands of the juvenile attention-seekers in the city of dreaming spires. But still, there's no avoiding it today... Considering how thoroughly Irving's reputation was shredded in court, some people may be surprised to find Max Hastings giving him quite so much credit:

...So much abuse has been heaped on the man that it is often ignored that he is an energetic and original researcher, whose findings are not always perverted. His recent volumes on Churchill - self-published, because no commercial publishers would touch them - contain nuggets. Hugh Trevor-Roper once described Irving's work Hitler's War as "the nearest thing we shall ever have to the autobiography the Fuehrer never wrote". No serious historian of the second world war can exclude Irving's books from the reading list.

Irving's old antagonist, Deborah Lipstadt is a lot harder on the president of the Union - and rightly so. Here's what she has to say on her blog:

Mr. Tyrl seems not to understand that there is a vast difference between pushing views "underground" and simply not giving them a platform at the Oxford Union....Moreover he argues that the best way to deal with these people is "to crush these people in debate ." How does he propose "debating" someone such as David Irving who is a proven liar and falsifier of history?
He contends that "it's patronising to suggest that Oxford students aren't intelligent enough to debate with these people." Challenging someone such as David Irving has little to do with intelligence, it has to do with knowing how he is lying and distorting the facts. And as smart as Oxford students may think they are, just because they are at Oxford does not mean they have the knowledge -- Mr. Tyrl does not seem to recognize the difference between intelligence and knowledge -- to catch a liar who distorts and falsifies.

[Pic: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images]