Deep VIEW
Denial :
Thoughts on a Movie , Memories of a Trial
Richard J . Evans Regius Professor Emeritus of History University of Cambridge
There are plenty of movies about the Holocaust , but it ’ s rare to have one about Holocaust denial . One such film , however , was Denial , released in 2016 and directed by Mick Jackson , best known for Volcano and Bodyguard , both made in the 1990s . It starred the well-known British actors Rachel Weisz , Timothy Spall and Tom Wilkinson , and it focused on the civil action for libel brought before the High Court in London in the year 2000 by the writer David Irving against the American academic Deborah Lipstadt over the allegation she made against him in her book Denying the Holocaust : The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory , published in the UK in 1994 . Lipstadt had called Irving a Holocaust denier and a falsifier of historical evidence . Irving issued a writ for defamation , claiming this damaged his reputation and thus affected his livelihood as a freelance historian .
Over three months , from 11 January to 11 April 2000 , the case was fought out between Irving , who represented himself , and the senior barrister Richard Rampton QC , instructed by the solicitor Anthony Julius , who had previously won fame as Princess Diana ’ s lawyer in her divorce from the Prince of Wales . The parties had agreed that the trial should be held before a judge alone , since the issues were too complex for a jury to grasp . Lipstadt ’ s defence relied on what is called ‘ justification ’, that is , her book was indeed defamatory but everything it said about Irving was true , an absolute defence against a libel suit in English law .
The defence relied mainly on expert witnesses , of whom I was one . My task was to go through Irving ’ s work with a view to seeing whether Lipstadt ’ s allegations were justified . As well as obtaining copies of his numerous books in English and German , the defence also obtained a court order obliging Irving to ‘ discover ’, or in other words make available , audio and video recordings of his numerous speeches , his correspondence with publishers , his research notes and much more besides . To cope with this enormous mass of material ,
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Observing Memories Issue 5