Telling a real life story, like the story of Rommel and his campaigns in Libya and Egypt, is like a painting. What we the readers get to see depends on what the painter saw and how the painter interpreted what he saw – and whether the painter had an agenda. So the court painters of the 18thCentury were required to deliver portraits that their patrons wanted to see - flattering. The painter’s eye is shaped by the life they’ve lead and their political and philosophical views. 

One of the remarkable men who painted Rommel in words for us was the British historian David Irving. And his is a remarkable life – with the dramatic climax being a defamation case that he brought in the Supreme Court of England against American historian Deborah Lipstadt, and her publishers, Penguin Books, for Lipstadt’s claim that David Irving was a holocaust denier.

Tag words: David Irving; Field Marshall Erwin Rommel; Deborah Lipstadt; Penguin Books; Denial; Holocaust; Professor Richard Evans; Richard Cohen; Making History; Kell Richards; Truth-Telling; Myall Creek massacre; Linda Burney; Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; Grand Mufti; Adolf Hitler; Hitler’s War; Trail of the Fox; The Destruction of Dresden; Winston Churchill; Condor Legion;