BEN CHACKO: Your work defending Deborah Lipstadt from a lawsuit by David Irving after he sued her for accusing him of Holocaust denial show that you have always taken the importance of the historical record seriously. A number of recent developments suggest the history of the second world war is being falsified by nationalist and far-right groups in a variety of countries. 

In Poland, we saw a row go international over a proposed law that would have made it an offence to accuse Poland of complicity in the Holocaust; in Latvia, we have the regular march of Waffen SS veterans who are paid pensions for their wartime activity by the government; in Ukraine in 2016 we saw a national holiday created in honour of Symon Petliura, whose anti-Bolshevik separatist government oversaw pogroms that killed tens of thousands of Jews, and now one honouring Stepan Bandera, whose Ukrainian Insurgent Army killed tens of thousands of Jews and Poles in active collaboration with the nazis. Why do you think it is becoming fashionable to claim these people as heroes?

RICHARD EVANS: Eastern European countries have a disturbing tendency to regard the Soviet Union as a worse and more brutal historical regime than Nazi Germany. This has led them to glorify anyone who resisted the Soviet domination of their countries or opposed the Soviet Union in any way, especially if they claimed to be acting in the national interest. This is a disturbing trend.