Skip to main content
Logo icon
Lord Lexden

Main navigation

  • About
  • Articles & Reviews
  • Letters
  • News
  • Parliament
  • Publications
  • Contact
Logo icon
Lord Lexden

Falsifying history - the BBC and the Nuremberg trials

  • Tweet
Friday, 3 September, 2021
  • Articles
hs

The following letter was published in The Daily Telegraph on 3 September.

 

SIR - Charles Moore (Notebook, August 31) is right to castigate the playwright who has eliminated Sir Hartley Shawcross from the current BBC series on the Nuremberg trials, at which he was the chief British prosecutor.

His closing speech left a lasting impression on Airey Neave, then a 29- year-old war hero, who assisted the prosecution team, and to whom I was political adviser from 1977 to 1979.

In his last book, Nuremberg (1978), based on notes he made at the time, Neave recalled the “elegant scorn” of “the dark-haired and resplendent Shawcross” who “tore into the rotten defences of the Nazi politicians like an avenging fury”, speaking for the “ten million dead in Europe”.

It is wholly spurious to claim, as the BBC has done, that “a clearer dramatisation” is achieved by putting the famous speech into the mouth of Shawcross’s deputy. The switch diminishes the dramatic impact of the words, while falsifying history.

Airey Neave, who had no high regard for the integrity of the BBC, would not have been surprised.

Lord Lexden
London SW1

You may also be interested in

school

VAT on school fees - the consequences

Monday, 13 October, 2025
Labour’s education tax is inflicting grave damage on independent schools - but it will not bring the Government nearly as much money as they expected to get.Speaking in the Lords on 13 October, Alistair Lexden asked: “Have the Government noted a recent detailed survey by the Independent Sc

Show only

  • Articles
  • Recent News
  • Speeches

Image: National Archives and Records Administration via Wikipedia

Lord Lexden OBE

Footer

  • About RSS
  • Accessibility
  • Cookies
  • Privacy
  • About Lord Lexden
  • Articles and Reviews
  • Letters
  • Parliament
  • Publications
Promoted by Alan Mabbutt on behalf of Lord Lexden, both at 4 Matthew Parker Street, London, SW1H 9HQ
Copyright 2025 Lord Lexden OBE . All rights reserved.
Powered by Bluetree