Controversial historian David Irving today lost his appeal against a British High Court libel ruling that branded him a "Holocaust denier".
Mr Irving had sued American academic Ms Deborah Lipstadt and publisher Penguin over her 1994 book, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory.He said it destroyed his livelihood and generated waves of hatred against him.
Giving his judgment in the case 15 months ago, Mr Justice Gray said 63-year-old Mr Irving had, for his own ideological reasons, deliberately misrepresented historical evidence and portrayed Hitler in an unwarranted favourable light.
Mr Irving, faced with a £2 million sterling bill for the defendants' legal costs, funded his appeal with the help of contributions from supporters.
Last month his counsel, Mr Adrian Davies, said the author had never said that the killing of the Jews was "in any way excusable".
The findings of justification in respect of the "defamatory" charges on which the defendants succeeded were against the weight of evidence, he said.
He said Mr Irving's work must be assessed in the context of what was reasonably available to him at the time he was writing books such as Hitler's War- which was published in the 1970s.
Mr Davies also argued the judge's findings on specific issues were wrong as a matter of history, or that Mr Irving had come to a reasonable alternative position to the established view on some of these issues.
Mr Irving was not in court for today's announcement.
PA