1942 disaster of arctic convoy PQ17

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Jeremy Clarkson’s BBC show in battle with Nazi historian
By Richard Eden 7:30AM GMT 05 Jan 2014
Jeremy Clarkson’s BBC documentary is the subject of a legal complaint from David Irving, the controversial historian
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/10550874/Jeremy-Clarkson s-BBC-show-in-battle-with-Nazi-historian.html

Best known as the provocative presenter of Top Gear, Jeremy Clarkson was chosen by the BBC to front a serious documentary about the Navy Arctic convoys that delivered essential supplies from Britain to the Soviet Union during the Second World War. Mandrake can disclose that the programme has, however, led to a legal action over claims of plagiarism.

David Irving, the controversial historian, alleges that Clarkson’s documentary, PQ17: An Arctic Convoy Disaster, used a wide range of material from his book The Destruction of Convoy PQ-17, without permission or accreditation.

Irving’s 1967 work, which was a besteller in Britain and America, was the first account of the disaster that befell one convoy, PQ17, in which seven of the convoy’s 22 merchant ships were lost during a series of heavy enemy daylight attacks which lasted a week.

“At least half of Clarkson’s script and storyline is anonymously quarried from my book,” claims Irving. “I am sending to the BBC’s legal department on Monday a Letter before Action, including a full schedule of 14 passages which I claim were lifted from or based on my book.

“It is shameful, but, alas, characteristic, the way the BBC overpays its 'stars’ and gives neither cash nor credit to those who toiled at the coalface, so to speak, 50 years ago. There are limits to how far fair usage can go.”

Clarkson tells me: “I did read it [Irving’s book]." However, he adds: “We worked for 18 months on the programme. It was not just a question of regurgitating everything in his book.”

The end credits mentioned a team of four researchers and also named the historian Patrick Bishop and Elena Smolina, a Russian film maker. “I had lunch with Patrick Bishop, a distinguished historian,” says Clarkson. “Why would I rely on Irving?”

Irving, who brought an unsuccessful libel case against the American historian Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books in 1996 after he was accused of Holocaust denial, lists in great detail the ways in which the programme allegedly used his work.

“Clarkson, of course, makes himself the central figure, whereas the real heroes were guys like, well, my father, who was in HMS Edinburgh when she was sunk not far away a few weeks earlier,” says the historian.

“I have good reason to know my book is in the BBC library. Much is lifted from it direct, from the quotes at the beginning, from the Douglas Fairbanks’ diary to the death toll among the Allied seamen at the end, which I painstakingly compiled from the British and American ships’ records, without the feet-up-and-take-it-easy use of hired researchers.

“The script is sprinkled with sentences and passages lifted from my work. The research I did was knuckle-breaking. Because the Admiralty refused to provide a photocopy, I had to trace and copy the secret U-Boat code-chart of the northern hemisphere by hand, a job that took many days. Without it, the U-Boat signals were meaningless.

“I recorded many of the interviews with the survivors and German submarine and bomber crews. The documentary pursues, particularly, the stories of the barrister turned minesweeper-captain Leo Gradwell, Vice-Admiral Norman Denning, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and others long dead, all of whom I visited and interviewed in depth to build my research.”

He adds: “The facts from my exclusive interviews with the admirals present at the crucial Admiralty board meeting in July 1942 are also quoted.”

One viewer, Steve Fairweather, of Harrogate, who has complained to the BBC, says: “I watched your documentary on the plight of convoy PQ17 with great anticipation as the subject greatly interests me. I had open in front of me my first edition copy of David Irving’s book The Destruction of Convoy PQ17 from 1967 and was aware almost instantly that the bulk of the detail used in the documentary was lifted directly from the pages within David Irving’s book.

“Some passages and details were quoted almost word for word. Because of this, you can imagine my surprise when, upon reaching the end credits of the documentary, there was not one mention of the author. This is not the sort of conduct that I would expect to see from the BBC. Shameful.”

A spokesman says: “The BBC utterly refutes Mr Irving’s claim that the programme plagiarised his book. The tragic events surrounding the convoy codenamed PQ17, including the role of those featured in our documentary, have been described in detail in a number of publications and secondary sources covering the disaster.

“All of the primary source material featured in the programme, including interviews with the survivors, diaries and letters, were sourced independently by the production team.”

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