Richard Evans is a British historian of 19th- and 20th-century Europe with a focus on Germany. He was born September 29, 1947
Richard Evans was part of the Court case between Deborah Lippstadt and David Irving.
“Not one of [Irving's] books, speeches or articles, not one paragraph, not one sentence in any of them, can be taken on trust as an accurate representation of its historical subject.”
Richard Evans was so against David Irving that he decided to make a book about the whole court trial and explain to his audience that Irving is not a historian and that he is a Nazi. As he mentions in the quote above that he has no sense of historical knowledge and is incorrect.
Upon the release of Lippstadt's book on Holocaust Denial in the UK, Lippstadt was sued for libel by David Irving, an author and avid Holocaust denier.
Irving took Lippstadt to court, claiming that it was libel to call him a Holocaust denier in her book, even though his “academic” claims directly supported the use of the label
Lippstadt was encouraged by colleagues to ignore the suit, but due to UK civil court laws, ignoring the suit would mean Irving would win.
Unlike US court laws, the burden of proof lay on her, the defendant, instead of Irving, the plaintiff
She mentions in her talk that if she didn’t take on the case it would go against her life’s work and she “could never look a survivor in the eyes”
She won the libel case by proving that Irving was, in fact, a Holocaust denier, proving in a legal context that all his arguments, and therefore the arguments of the entire Denier community, were factually incorrect.
