Sir Richard Evans is known for many roles. He is President of Wolfson College, a major authority on the history of the Third Reich and a Regius Professor of History. But now, he is experiencing a new part: he has been captured in a Hollywood film.

The critically acclaimed Denial, which was released in January, documents the case of Irving v Penguin Books Ltd [2000], in which David Irving sued Deborah Lipstadt for libel after she criticised him in her book Denying the Holocaust for his falsification of historical evidence and willingness to deny the Holocaust. As part of the trial, Evans was called as an expert witness tasked with demonstrating Irving’s manipulation of sources.

“As I saw the elderly people crowding the public galleries with their sleeves rolled up and their Auschwitz tattoo numbers on their arms, I realised it was something much bigger”

Meeting with Evans, who is portrayed by John Sessions, I was keen to hear his thoughts about its accuracy. “I wish he’d lost some weight before he had portrayed me,” he tells me with a smile. “But, no, he’s fine. All the courtroom scenes are taken directly from the trial transcripts. So the words that are said are the actual words said in the trial.”

“And that”, he continues, “makes it rather strange for me to see John Sessions saying my words, not the words of some script on the screen. I thought ‘my goodness, I was fantastic, I was brilliant!’ until, of course, I realised he’s a professional actor who can project himself better than I can.”

Evans’s memories of the case remain vivid. “I was there most of the time,” he recalls. “I was in the witness box for 28 hours, not just for five minutes as appears on the screen. I went into it thinking ‘this is an interesting theoretical exercise’, but as soon as I saw the elderly people crowding the public galleries with their sleeves rolled up and their Auschwitz tattoo numbers on their arms, I realised it was something much bigger. Though I fear they were seeking some kind of final catharsis for their suffering which, of course, we couldn’t really give them.”

Of the trial itself, Evans tell me “I have a lot of memories: mostly, it was extremely boring. Very tedious, hours of tedium punctuated by brief moments of high drama. And, of course, it’s the latter which appear on the screen”.

Review: Cries of 'Denial'

Evans also recalls receiving two valuable pieces of advice prior to his appearance in the witness box. “Don’t drink too much water when you’re in the witness box because it’s embarrassing to have to ask the judge for a comfort break and, more seriously, don’t look Irving in the eye because you’ll only get annoyed.”

“I did, to begin with, and it was a mistake,” Evans tells me. “So for the rest of my 28 hours in the witness box, after the first half day, I turned my back on him, which got him annoyed, and addressed my remarks, as one should do, to the judge.”

Evans remains proud of his role in the trial, telling me that it achieved three things: “First of all, it kept the lines open for free speech. Irving was trying to get Lipstadt’s book pulped. By defeating him, the defence struck a blow for the freedom of speech,” he explains, noting “it’s important to say that because it’s often misunderstood.”

“And the second thing is it discredited Irving in the academic community. Beforehand, he had some credence because, on the face of it, his research looks solid. There are a lot of footnotes to original sources and it’s only when you go through [them] that you can then begin to see the falsifications. And thirdly, I think it was educational.”

“Somebody once said that all publicity is good publicity. But the trial taught me that is absolutely not true”

I probe him for details about the public reaction. “As soon as the verdict was announced, the press went to town,” he recalls. “There’s nothing a newspaper editor likes more than putting on the front page a picture of somebody with ‘Liar’ and ‘Cheat’ without any fear of being sued. And so that had an educative effect: it was enormous publicity for the truth and the reality of the Holocaust.”

But is Denial not introducing Irving and his work to a new generation, I ask? “Somebody once said that all publicity is good publicity. But the trial taught me that is absolutely not true. Denial does no favours to Irving and I think Timothy Spall plays him brilliantly, not as a large booming, bullying man but as a small, creepy, slimy man which is perfectly his right as an actor to do. The effect is the same.”

In light of the recent spate of Holocaust-denying leaflets being distributed around Cambridge, I was interested to know whether Evans believed Irving’s ideas might be experiencing a resurgence in popularity. “I think the people who leafleted the Sidgwick Site are a bit pathetic”, he says quickly. “They’re not keeping up with the times, really. Because that doesn’t have any effect, especially not somewhere like the Sidgwick Site.”

However, Evans does admit “there has been an increase in expressions of racial hatred and aggression towards minorities after Brexit and that is being encouraged by Trump’s victory in the USA.” But he remains optimistic, telling me that he hopes “Denial will do its bit for establishing the truth”.

Our conversation moves to the recent statement issued by the White House on Holocaust Memorial Day that omitted to mention the Jews. Evans is sceptical that it can be explained as a mistake or an unintended omission, noting that “the White House said they wanted to be inclusive. What they forgot is that, although the Nazis murdered millions of other people (‘Slavs’, homosexuals, gypsies, petty criminals, many groups of people), the Jews were different.”

“It’s not a matter of the numbers”, he continues passionately. “The fact is that they regarded all of these [other groups] as obstacles to get out of the way. Homosexuals because they were supposedly weakening the German war effort, ‘Slavs’ because they were occupying land the Germans wanted.”

Flyers denying Holocaust left at Sidgwick Site

“The Jews were different”, he explains. “They were the so-called ‘world enemy’, as Goebbels called them. They were aiming to destroy Germany. They were a universal, existential threat and therefore they had to be killed, all of them, everywhere, wherever they were found. That is a difference, I think, and they were in a different category.”

To Evans, “the annihilation of the European Jews is a different kind of genocide and that’s why it’s very important that we remember it not just as one of a whole series of genocides, though, of course, we should remember those, too. And the White House oddly, I think, it’s difficult to explain why they did that. Because, on the one hand, this so called alt-right to which they’re connected has on its fringes anti-Semitic elements but, on the other hand, the White House under Trump is promising to be more pro-Israel than Obama was.”

“Britain punches way above its weight in the world of research and higher education [but] I’m afraid Brexit has put a big question mark under it”

I move the interview away from Trump to the other shock political event of 2016. As President of Wolfson College, Evans is naturally preoccupied with the likely impact of Brexit upon British universities, and his outlook is negative. “Seventeen per cent of Cambridge’s research funding comes from the EU,” he explains, “and I think it’s going to be very difficult either to keep that going by some special arrangement or to persuade the government to plug the gap.”

“Cambridge is a global university and it’s a university which depends on multinational collaboration”, he continues before suggesting that Cambridge will “drop down the world rankings along with other British universities unless the government realises that it’s got to find ways of trying to facilitate researchers coming from other parts of the world, including the EU.”

“At Wolfson, I’ve had to reassure our students and our Fellows that whatever happens we will be a cosmopolitan, outward-looking, globally orientated college.” Indeed, Evans laments the fact that Brexit “sent the message to the world that Britain doesn’t welcome foreigners”, noting that this could be “deeply damaging to our standing in the world of higher education.”

Furthermore, he argues, “Britain punches way above its weight in the world of research and higher education, compared to Germany, for example, which ought to be up there as well. It’s an extraordinary achievement and I’m afraid Brexit has put a big question mark under it”