David Irving
David Irving
By the late 1980s Irving had placed himself in the fringes of the study of history, and had begun to turn to further extremes, possibly influenced by the 1988 trial of the Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel. That trial, and his reading of the pseudoscientific Leuchter report, led him openly to espouse Holocaust denial, specifically denying that Jews were murdered by gassing at Auschwitz concentration camp.
Early life
David John Cawdell Irving and his twin brother, Nicholas, were born in Hutton, Essex, on 24 March 1938, six months before the start of the undeclared German–Czechoslovak War, as Nazi Germany moved towards initiating the Second World War. The family lived in Hutton, near Brentwood, Essex. Irving had another brother, John, and a sister, Jennifer. His father, John James Cawdell Irving (1898–1967), was a career naval officer and a commander in the Royal Navy. His mother, Beryl Irving (née Newington), was an illustrator and a writer of children's books.
Early life
During the Second World War Irving's father was an officer aboard the light cruiser HMS Edinburgh). On 30 April 1942, while escorting Convoy QP 11 in the Barents Sea, the ship was badly damaged by the German submarine U-456. Two days later, the ship was attacked by the German destroyers Hermann Schoemann, Z24 and Z25, and now beyond recovery, was abandoned then scuttled by a torpedo from HMS Foresight). Irving's father survived but severed all links with his wife and children after the incident.
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