I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you meant to say that he's a brilliant at distorting history in such a way that the ignorant may take his words seriously. But "suberb historian"? The fact that he deliberately distorts history, in my view, disqualifies him as being any legitimate historian whatsoever, be it a brilliant or mediocre one. Brilliant liars in no sense qualify as historians, despite their brilliance. Would you not agree that at the very least, to be qualified as a bona fide historian, even a mediocre one, one must at the very least provide reasonably verifiable evidence of what one purports to be "history"? David Irving may be clever, perhaps even brilliant, yet due the fact that he deliberately distorts history, in my mind disqualifies him entirely as being any sort of bona fide historian whatsoever. He's no more than an unfortunately gifted rabid anti-semite.  

On the other hand, my history may be just as terrible as Dirk's.