Similar sentiments voiced by Irving earned censure during his well-publicized lawsuit against Deborah Lipstadt. [See note] To Judge Charles Gray's castigation of him as a "racist," for example, Irving retorted: "My own feelings about race are precisely the same as 95 percent of the people of my generation ... If the British soldiers on the beaches of Normandy in 1944 could look forward to the end of the century and see what England has become, they would not have bothered to advance another 40 yards up the beach."