Controversial historian David Irving has not paid the first instalment of an estimated �2m in legal costs awarded against him in the wake of a failed libel case.

Mr Irving was supposed to have made an interim payment of �150,000 by last Friday.

He was ordered to pay the defence costs bill following his failed court action against US academic Deborah Lipstadt and her publisher Penguin Books.

He brought the case over Ms Lipstadt's work Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, in which he was described as a "Hitler partisan".

But he told BBC News Online on Tuesday that he had instead put a "pragmatic offer" to the publishers to pay the �150,000 as full and final settlement of their claim against him.

"Penguin Books is a company with shareholders who will want them to get some kind of recompense for the money they spent," he said.

Appeal bid denied

In his original complaint against Ms Lipstadt's book, Mr Irving said it had destroyed his livelihood and generated waves of hatred against him.

But after a trial in April last year Mr Justice Gray ruled that Ms Lipstadt was justified in what she had written.

He ruled that Mr Irving was anti-Semitic, a racist and an "active" Holocaust denier.

Mr Irving had expressed doubts about whether there had been mass gassing at the Auschwitz concentration camp.

The judge also refused Mr Irving leave to appeal - and last month the Court of Appeal said he could not try to overturn this ruling.

Mr Irving, 63, who has a flat in London's Mayfair, had been supported in his attempt to win permission to appeal with the help of donations from supporters - many of them from abroad.

Lawyers for Penguin Books and Ms Lipstadt were given more time to prepare a detailed assessment of their costs, estimated at �2m.

But Richard Rampton QC threatened bankruptcy proceedings if the �150,000 interim payment was not made by last Friday's deadline.