Who's afraid of David Irving?

In April 2000, Mr Justice Gray branded David Irving "an active Holocaust denier" who had treated historical evidence "in a manner that fell far short of the standard expected of a conscientious historian". Dismissing Mr Irving's libel action against Penguin and Deborah Lipstadt, author of Denying the Holocaust, the judge said that Mr Irving had "for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence".

One might have assumed that this devastating verdict would have ended Mr Irving's career as a pursuer of libel actions. One of the tests of a defamation is that it is likely to injure a person's reputation; and Mr Irving, a defendant could argue with confidence, has no reputation left to lose. However, Mr Irving continues to be a considerable irritant.

In the Observer (Sunday, 24th February), Tim Adams charted the aftermath of the Lipstadt case. Mr Irving is also pursuing the Observer and Gitta Sereny, the journalist and author, over an article she wrote in the paper in 1996. To date, the Observer has spent £800,000 in legal fees on an initial defence, and would need to spend a further £50,000 if it sought to have the case struck off on the grounds that Ms Sereny's allegations had already been proven. On his Website, Mr Irving claims that he will pursue the action "with full fury".

Penguin spent about £2m on defending the Denying the Holocaust case. It has not seen any money back. On 5th March, the publisher is pressing a bankruptcy claim on Mr Irving, and attempting to recover an interim payment of £125,000.

These travails are daunting to anyone who might consider writing or publishing material on Mr Irving. When Weidenfeld & Nicolson brought out the UK edition of US academic John Lukacs' book The Hitler of History, it toned down considerably the section dealing with the historian.

More dismaying still is the case of Lying About Hitler by Richard J Evans, the key defence witness in the Lipstadt trial. Last year, William Heinemann—described on Mr Irving's Website as "the highly respected Jewish firm in London"—dropped the book after taking legal advice. Granta took it up; the company was prepared to pay an increase in its libel insurance, and was confident that any legal action by Mr Irving would be struck off. Unfortunately, its relationship with Professor Evans foundered over a dispute about rights in other works by him. Lying About Hitler is available only in the US, from Basic Books. Mr Irving's take on this state of affairs is that Professor Evans' work is "so vile that nobody in this country will print it".

Meanwhile, Mr Irving has been writing to potential distributors of the US edition of Lying About Hitler, "warning them of precisely the 'problems and complications' that will rain down on them if they disseminate the lies of Evans". This kind of intimidation is what the Booksellers Association, which is lobbying for an amendment to the Defamation Act ("BA to fight gagging laws", The Bookseller, 15th February), is attempting to prevent.

The print media are powerful and, experience has shown, quite often irresponsible. But the balance of the libel laws must be wrong when a disgraced individual such as David Irving can continue to use them to intimidate publishers and booksellers.