In the matter of Irving vs. Lipstadt, neither Keegan nor Watt addresses whose research has been proven and whose has been completely discredited. What seems to irk them is that someone who previously hadn't been on their radar ("few other historians had ever heard of her") had the deuced cheek to challenge someone who had. That the interloper was both a woman and a Jew must surely have been good for a few added harumphs at their drones' club of "reputable" historians.

As qualified as they are, Keegan's and Watt's endorsements must have been psychologically crucial to David Irving who, despite his flat in aristocratic Mayfair and his taste for tailored suits, comes from a middle-class background. When it suits him, Irving likes to boast of being a historian working outside the safety net of academia. He paints a picture of himself as an independent scholar, working free of the preconceptions (read: facts) that have hindered others.

But it's also clear that Irving wants to be accorded the respect and perks given to "establishment" historians (why else court the approval of Keegan or Watt? Even having to subpoena them gave him a chance to address them as equals). It's hard not to link Irving's desire to be accepted by the old boys' network with his inadvertent revelation, at trial, of the appeal fascism holds for him. "Like most fellow countrymen of my background and vintage," Irving said, "I regret the passing of the Old England. I sometimes think, my Lord, that if the soldiers and sailors who stormed the beaches of Normandy in 1944 could see what England would be like at the end of this century, they would not have got 50 yards up the beach. I think they would have given up in disgust." Irving's own disgust with England at the end of the 20th century can be pretty much summed up by the "light verse" he taught to his young daughter to recite whenever they passed mixed-race children on the street:

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	Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial By Richard J. Evans Basic Books 318 pages Nonfiction Buy this book
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I am a Baby Aryan
Not Jewish or Sectarian
I have no plans to marry an
Ape or Rastafarian.

Reading through Evans' account of the press coverage of the trial, you sense among many of the commentators something of that longing for a society where certain people belong and others clearly do not. There is a barely disguised anti-Semitism. Perhaps referring to the fact that a fraction of Lipstadt's legal bills were paid by Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation and other contributors, Jonathan Freedland of the Independent wrote, "It's telling that it was U.S. Jewry which wanted to do battle with Irving in a London court." -- untrue, since it was Irving who sued Lipstadt -- "British Jews were wary of handing him a free platform. But the Americans prevailed, as they nearly always do when it comes to the Shoah." (Irving did offer to settle the case with Penguin -- but not Deborah Lipstadt -- in exchange for 500 pounds, an open letter denying Lipstadt's "allegations" and a promise not to republish "Denying the Holocaust." But it wasn't American Jewry that made Penguin turn down what, from a business point of view, would have been a far less costly alternative. It was the truly odious choice of affirming David Irving's lies.)

One German journalist blamed the trial on "the determination above all of Jewish-American groups to wrestle down the deniers of the Holocaust." In a book review in the Independent published around the time of the trial, the British historian John Fox lambasted "Jewish racism" and fell into the language of conspiracy theory when he referred to "the political and cultural purposes which lay behind the American and Israeli Jewish 'management' of the Holocaust over the last 40 years." And then there was the post-verdict editorializing about how the Holocaust had now somehow become exempt from historical analysis (as if historical analysis had been what Irving was engaged in). Could the subtext of these remarks be any clearer? "Those people just can't let the Holocaust go." The comments find an echo in D.D. Guttenplan's contention that the most shocking thing about British anti-Semitism is how unabashed it is. During the initial revelations about Swiss banks and Nazi gold, the British mother-in-law of a friend of mine (a British Jew), said -- in my friend's presence -- "Oh, why can't they just get over it?"

Maya Angelou reads from "The Heart of a Woman"