London, October 17, 1997

Sir,
I read Hans Knight’s article, “The hit and miss of Hitler’s biographers” (Oct. 14?)

It seems that after twenty-five years nursing a poisonous grudge, John Lukács has at last found a chance to vent his spleen against me (the “British, indefatigably Führer-friendly” historian “who all but absolves Hitler of responsibility for the Holocaust.”)

“Lukács’ deft puncturing of Irving’s special pleadings is as delightful as it is devastating,” according to Knight; Lukács also faults my friend John Toland. What a pity readers cannot see the oily letter which Lukács wrote to Toland on March 21, 1972 (it is in the FDR Library, Hyde Park, N.Y.), bewailing the fact that no publisher will touch his own planned magnum opus on Hitler because The Viking Press is under contract to publish mine. The sour grapes have not ripened any over the twenty-five years since then, it seems.

[I enclose the items referred to in the above text ]

Yours faithfully,
David Irving

1. See also the similar review published in the Australia/Israel Review on May 1, 1998, sand Mr Irving’s comments on it.