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Hello, welcome to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service with me Rebecca

Kesby.

And today we go back to a moment in legal history when controversial British writer David

Irving tried to sue American historian Deborah Lipsstadt for libel

after she described him as a Holocaust denier.

The High Court has begun hearing a libel action brought by the controversial historian David Irving.

He said the academic Deborah Lipsstadt and Penguin Books were part of an organized attempt to destroy his career.

But Professor Lipsstadt and her publishers have said they'll prove that Mr Irving has repeatedly denied

that gas chambers were used by the Nazis to exterminate the Jewish population of Europe.

It was seen as a case that put history itself on trial.

On September 5, 1996, David Irving filed a libel suit against Professor Deborah Lipsstadt and her publisher Penguin Books. In her book,

denying the Holocaust the growing assault on truth and memory,

Professor Lipsstadt had argued that Irving

had deliberately distorted historical fact to support his own anti-Semitic agenda.

He said she was trying to destroy his professional reputation and sued her for libel. When she first received the notice, Deborah Lipsstadt didn't believe it.

I was sitting in my office, it was a fall day, I think the students had just

...