London - A libel ruling in favour of the historian, Mr David Irving, writes Rachel Donnelly, would mean no more than that several aspects of his work disputing the widely accepted facts of the Holocaust "are not so absurd . . . as to disqualify me from the ranks of historians", he told the High Court in London yesterday.
Moreover, such a judgment would not mean that the Holocaust never happened, Mr Irving said. "It means only that in England today, discussion is still permitted."
Mr Irving was making his closing statement at the end of a two-month libel trial. He is suing the US academic, Prof Deborah Lipstadt, and Penguin Books, over allegations in her book Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory that he is a "Holocaust-denier" who deliberately manipulates history to play down Hitler's culpability for the murder of Jews. Prof Lipstadt and Penguin Books deny libel.
In his closing statement, Mr Richard Rampton QC, for Prof Lipstadt and Penguin Books, described Mr Irving as a "rabid anti-Semite" whose views led him to "prostitute his reputation as a serious historian . . . for the sake of a bogus rehabilitation of Hitler".
Mr Justice Gray is expected to deliver his judgment within a few weeks.