I LAST came to this university campus in July 1976, with Carla Venchiarutti. I was researching my biography on Winston Churchill, on which I had signed the contract with Michael Joseph Ltd four years earlier; the papers of Churchill’s literary agent Curtis Brown are in the manuscripts library here. Dr Richard Heinzkill the Churchill bibliographer, guided me through them, and what a trove they are!

Left: The student Gabriela who introduced Mr Irving to the audience, with her parents

I deliver what I consider a great talk, inspired by this slightly noisy, half student gathering, and we manage to get away around 9:30 pm, after a coffee at Zenon’s with Jimmy Marr, the organiser on the ground in Eugene. High praise, much applause; an elderly Jewish lady in the audience insists that the daylight outside the room in Lüneburg where Heinrich Himmler died on May 23, 1945 would still have been quite strong at that time of night, 11:15 pm (I shall check this), and a young blonde standing next to Gabriela at the back asks several shrill questions, until I very gently put her down (having just related the H W Wicks story, about “obsessions”, with the remark, “I think, if I may be so bold as to say so, that you have become slightly obsessive” — to general friendly laughter, and she shuts up, if only for a while.

We arrive at Grants Pass at midnight; the Redwood Inn has closed its shutters, as they warned me, at 11 pm, so we check into the Shilo Inn down the road. Tomorrow: the wonderful drive down the Redwood Highway, California 199, just like that dreadful May 23 day in 2002.

Hear David Irving speak in England and the United States this year. Get his books at special prices, too.

Apply by clicking on this link.

 Poster advertising this evening’s event (pdf)
 Letter: What were the prevailing outside light conditions at the time of Himmler’s death?