The Irving v Lipstadt and Penguin Books trial was a libel case in which David Irving accused Deborah Lipstadt of damaging his reputation.

Irving argued that because Lipstadt – in her book, Denying the Holocaust – had called him 'one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial', this had damaged his reputation as a historian, making it difficult for him to find a publisher for his books and to earn a living as a writer.

Irving decided to represent himself at the trial, and fought his case without legal support. By contrast, the defence team was led by Richard Rampton QC, and had worked for more than a year to assemble the evidence. But the defendant, Lipstadt, did not speak, refusing on principle to debate with Holocaust deniers.

The trial took three months, involved more than 6,000 pages of witness testimony and cost the defence more than £5 million. Because of the complexities of the issues and evidence, there was no jury, and the case was heard by a judge alone, Mr Justice Charles Gray, who announced his verdict on 11 April 2000.

He found Lipstadt not guilty of libel and condemned Irving in outspoken terms, saying: 'The charges which I have found to be substantially true include the charges that Irving has for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence; that for the same reasons he portrayed Hitler in an unwarrantedly favourable light, principally in relation to his attitude towards and responsibility for the treatment of the Jews; that he is an active Holocaust denier; that he is antisemitic and racist and that he associates with right wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism...

'In the result therefore the defence of justification succeeds.'

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