'Racist' historian faces £150,000 bill

David Irving: Faces legal costs of more than £2m

Historian David Irving has been ordered to pay £150,000 on account within six weeks towards defence costs in his failed libel action - or face bankruptcy.

Heather Rogers, counsel for Penguin Books, made the application on Friday at London's Law Courts.

It was made on their behalf, and for Deborah Lipstadt, author of Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory.

Mr Irving was left facing a defence costs bill of more than £2m after Mr Justice Gray rejected his action last month. The High Court judge denounced him as both an anti-Semitic and a racist.

Mr Irving, 62, claimed the book had destroyed his livelihood and generated waves of hatred against him.

Deborah Lipstadt: Called Mr Irving a "Hitler partisan"

Miss Rogers told Mr Justice Gray that more than £1m had already been paid out to defence experts - who compiled evidence for the 32-day case - and that defence solicitors had not yet produced their own bill of costs.

She said the costs officer should deal with Mr Irving's claim that the defence's experts and counsel were paid too much. The judge had ordered that they should make a detailed assessment of what was due.

Adrian Davies, for Mr Irving, queried the scale of the costs and whether such an order should be made at all at this stage.

He reminded the judge that Mr Irving would have accepted £500 and an apology before the case came to court.

'Hitler partisan'

Mr Irving brought the libel action because he said his reputation had been damaged by Prof Lipstadt and his livelihood threatened as a result.

But after considering the case for almost four weeks, Mr Justice Gray ruled against Irving, concluding that the defence of justification succeeded.

In her book, Ms Lipstadt, who is Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust studies at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, described Mr Irving as "one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial".

She questioned his claim to be a historian at all and described him as a "Hitler partisan" who had distorted history.

Mr Irving said he never claimed the Holocaust did not occur, but did question the number of Jewish dead and denied their systematic extermination in concentration camp gas chambers.