The letter is addressed not to me but to the Editor of The Times (who passed it on to me), and is a response to a piece I had written in the Times Diary (which I shepherded to the brink of extinction after 80-odd glorious years) on July 24, 2001.

Now, I had had a little personal correspondence with Irving up to this point and had occasionally featured on his website in a not entirely flattering light. One entry, for example, ran: “I have no idea who — or what — the Times diarist Mr Coren is.” Don’t you love the “what” there? I do wonder what he means . . .

And look at what Irving is aching to suggest here: “Never get into a pissing match with a Skunk. Although, I fear to compare Mr Coren with that furry animal, lest I be accused of anti-Skunkism.”

Ha-Ha. Do you see what he’s done there, with the capital “S” and everything? Anti-Skunkism. These Skunks, they’re everywhere in the media, and so neurotic, with that infuriating persecution complex of theirs . . .

If you don’t believe me, just go to Irving’s website at www.fpp.co.uk and put my name in the search engine. As websites go, it is fast, well organised and ruthlessly efficient. Qualities, given the context, to make your blood run cold.

But to the matter in hand. When Irving published the second volume of his Churchill biography in 2001, he sent a copy to The Times, and while the policy of the paper at that time was to ignore him, to pretend he did not exist, I decided to feature it as the Diary’s Book of the Month.

In response, Irving wrote the letter which has given five years of fun to full-bladdered guests in my home, largely because of its eye-popping lack of self-awareness.

It is datelined, with a gloriously high-flown sense of occasion, “London, Thursday, July 26, 2001 (1:49am)” — I do love the thought of him sitting there in the small hours, furiously typing by the light of a guttering candle, under that picture of the Führer he had on his wall, imagining himself in a Munich prison cell in the 1920s railing against the liberalities of the Jew-riddled Weimar Republic.

I should add that he writes at the top of his letter “Not for Publication” — but, frankly, I dare say my long-dead great-grandmother, great-aunt, great-uncle and cousins who got on the train to Auschwitz (no doubt believing, as Irving still does, that there could not possibly be a death camp at the other end) considered themselves “Not for Liquidation”.

So, frankly, balls to him:

Dear Editor,

I am not going to take issue with Giles Coren’s latest swipes and sneers at me (July 14, 24), but is it not the practice, when material (in the latest case, a photograph) is lifted from a book sent to your newspaper for review purposes, at least to give the book’s proper title? Mr Coren has studiously avoided doing so, not once but twice. May I ask you therefore to insert an item, perhaps in your corrections column, in case any of your readers take his silly title (Hitler etc) seriously. The book’s real title is Churchill’s War, vol ii: Triumph in Adversity (Focal Point, 2001).

By way of comment only, I must protest at Coren’s treatment of facts. His latest item reads (July 24): “The photograph above comes from my book of the month, David Irving’s How Hitler Invented Penicillin, Told Excellent Jokes Against Himself and Saved the Jews from Stalin (JudenRaus Press, Recihmarks 20). How do you think this picture in Mr Irving’s charming and balanced account of the war is captioned? Is it: (a) “Hurrah! - Britain celebrates VE-Day.”

(b) “Ladies first — our girls celebrate the end of the war.”

Or (c) “The White and smiling face of wartime Britain — Churchill’s people in the summer of 1943 are contented and confident, but Cabinet ministers express concern about the British female’s appetite for the Black US servicemen now flooding into the country.”

Answers tomorrow (but it’s‘c’).”

In fact . . . the picture caption in my book reads: “The White and smiling face of wartime Britain: Churchill’s people in the summer of 1943 are contented and confident; but the war has ushered in a social revolution for women. They are manning the workbenches and taking home pay-packets of their own; they have started smoking in public and wearing trousers, and Cabinet ministers express concern about the British female’s appetite for the Black US servicemen now flooding into the country.”

There are four pages of the book devoted to Cabinet minutes on the latter controversy. It has to be said that Bernard Levin did this kind of thing much better.

Yours sincerely,
David Irving

It is a troubled and guilt-ridden little country that locks up a pompous old dullard like Irving. You might as well imprison Tam Dalyell or Elmer Fudd. Irving should be sent home immediately and given some comfy shoes and an allotment somewhere. I’ll look after him if you like.

International justice has bigger fish to fry.

Times Recommends

• And lo, he ventured forth . . .
• Lying to your children isn't a crime
• A single way to improve IVF treatment