Hi there, I just finished reading Irving's book 'Churchill's Book'. As much as I dislike Irving as a person, the book is very well written, enjoyable and after double-checking parts, it seems well researched (Besides the focus, which seems to be pure speculation rather than fact). From a historian's point of view, can you trust anything he wrote, is he still referenced by historians? Btw, I am not defending Irving, but I am aware of his Holocaust record and tho much of what he has written seems to be nonsense, some things he has said have been backed by Franciszek Piper and other scholars. But back to the question, what do Historians think of Irving?
what do Historians think of Irving?
"David Irving is mercantile scum who cares about making money and selling his books. He does not care about the proper historical method despite all of his pretenses." - u/kieslowskifan
"Because David Irving is a Holocaust denier, which is a pretty hefty reason to not be considered a historian anymore." - u/commiespaceinvader
All three linked threads also explain why both users hold such opinions of Irving. Also useful is this Monday Methods post on Holocaust Denial also by commiespaceinvader, which calls out Irving both in its text body and in the comments beneath.
This was the core of the libel case Irving lost against Penguin books in 2000. Deborah Lipstadt had described Irving's Holocaust denial in her book and Irving sued. He lost not only on the question of his attitude to the Holocaust but on the larger question of his historical methods and ethics. Richard Evans acted as an expert witness for Penguin and fact checked Irving's work finding numerous falsifications.
The judgement is a long one (pages 323-31 are most relevant to your questions) but it is devastating. Justice Gray determined ‘it appears to me that the correct and inevitable inference must be that for the most part the falsification of the historical record was deliberate and that Irving was motivated by a desire to present events in a manner consistent with his own ideological beliefs even if that involved distortion and manipulation of historical evidence.’ (p.331).
To put it simply, this is the textbook definition of bad history and taints Irving’s work in its entirety. It is not the case that Irving was a careful scholar with an unfortunate sideline in neo-nazism, he was a fraud.
Sources
DAVID IRVING v PENGUIN BOOKS LIMITED DEBORAH E. LIPSTADT 11 April 2000 (https://phdn.org/archives/www.david-irving.de/docs/irvingjudgment.pdf)
Richard Evans, Lying about Hitler (2002).