Tim Worstall

The Da Vinci Code

One slight problem with this lawsuit over Dan Brown’s excreable book, The Da Vinci Code.

Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh are suing their own
publishers, Random House, claiming Dan Brown’s story lifts from their
1982 book, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, itself a best seller.

This
non-fiction work deals with theories that Jesus and Mary Magdalene
married and had a child, and that the blood line continues to this day
– with the Catholic Church trying suppress the discovery.

It’s not as if these two actually came up with the theory themselves. Isn’t it in one of the Gnostic Gospels?

In

5 responses

  1. Justin Avatar
    Justin

    They didn’t come up with the idea – they were led by the nose by the French fraudster called Pierre Plantard.
    Their whole book was unmitigated horseshit of the most hilarious kind. Umberto Eco satirises it excellent effect in Foucault’s Pendulum.

    Reply
  2. Andrew McGuinness Avatar
    Andrew McGuinness

    I would assume the lawsuit is a publicity stunt to increase sales of the plaintiffs’ books. It just goes to show – if they had correctly labelled their books as “fiction”, they might have sold even better.

    Reply
  3. John Fembup Avatar
    John Fembup

    Foucault’s Pendulum was satire?
    Ooooooo Noooooooo

    Reply
  4. ivan Avatar
    ivan

    I can imagine that only a fraction of the idea’s in the book are actually those of Dan Brown. Still, he has worked hard to write the book, and he has put all the idea’s together in one single story. It’s his story. Why should others have to right to forbid this book to be sold? There is something horribly wrong with our system of intellectual monopoly rights.

    Reply
  5. The Remittance Man Avatar
    The Remittance Man

    Damn! Andrew’s conspiracy theory synapses are sparking faster than mine.
    Like him, the moment I heard this on the news I wondered, whose lawyer contacted who?
    Imagine the conversation:
    “Hi, Barry Schyster, here from Souix, Grabbitt and Wrunn. We represent Big Publishing Limited and we have a proposition that could make you a shed load of dosh…..”
    The whole thing’s actually laughable. The authors of one bad book (based on some very poor leaps of intuition between one dodgy fact and the next) are suing their own publishers for publishing another author’s work that takes their excuse for research as the basis for a pretty dire novel (and yes, I’ve read the two books and been singularly unimpressed in both cases).
    RM

    Reply

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