The Dan Brown Enigma (19 page)

‘I have received a letter of thanks from Margaret Starbird,’ Brown said, ‘and Blythe remains in friendly contact with her. Margaret’s career has really taken off since publication of
The Da Vinci Code
. We see her on television specials all the time, and her books are now bestsellers. Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince also sent me a kind letter through their publisher, saying they were very happy with the newfound attention to their books, that they were fans of my work.’

Another accusation levelled at him was that he made Teabing a cripple to reflect the disability of Henry Lincoln, the third author of
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail
. ‘I have read an allegation that I made Leigh Teabing a polio victim and a cripple because it was my cruel way of including Mr Lincoln (who apparently walks with a severe limp) in my anagram. This is both untrue and unthinkable to me.’

Brown claimed he had never met Lincoln and so didn’t know he had a disability. Nor did he know that Lincoln had worked for the BBC until he was advised of the fact by his British lawyers. What’s the significance of this? Brown had used the BBC ‘as a device to give Langdon and Teabing a history together,’ he explained in the witness statement. The idea was that this would give Teabing status so that Langdon could easily turn to him for advice. ‘I used the BBC in
Angels & Demons
as well; the BBC is the only British news agency with which American readers are familiar, and it adds credibility.’
[193]

The media frenzy around the court case began in October 2005 when BBC News published a story on their website stating that the two authors had launched a lawsuit against the publishers of
The Da Vinci Code,
saying that Brown had ‘infringed upon their ideas.’
[194]
Ironically, the publisher, Random House, was also the publisher of
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail
and had recently reissued it under their Century imprint.

The article reported that a High Court hearing would take place the following week with the trial coming up the following year. Baigent and Leigh were claiming Brown had stolen the theme that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and had children. ‘The authors had been struck by alleged similarities to their history book,’ stated the spokeswoman for Baigent and Leigh. Brown, they also claimed, had lifted huge chunks from their book for
The Da Vinci Code.
Baigent and Leigh’s book also featured ‘cryptically coded parchments, secret societies, the Knights Templar’ and links them to ‘a dynasty of obscure French kings’ and the Holy Grail.
[195]

Six days later another article appeared on BBC News announcing that a trial date had been set for 27 February 2006. This story also said Baigent and Leigh felt that Brown’s book, ‘which explores similar ideas, constitutes “theft of intellectual property”.’
[196]

The Daily Telegraph
entered the fray with an article on 28 February 2006. According to the newspaper, Baigent and Leigh said that Brown had ‘lifted the whole architecture and theme’ from their book. Baigent, a 52-year-old New Zealander living in Britain and Leigh, a 62-year-old American living in London, said that a lot of people noticed the similarities between their book and
The Da Vinci Code
, which, the article said, was what had motivated the two men to bring the lawsuit.
The Daily Telegraph
stated that Leigh felt no animosity towards Brown as a person but thought Brown had written ‘a pretty bad novel’.

The two authors were suing Random House, Brown’s UK publisher, in the High Court for past royalties and future earnings, even though their book was a bestseller as well.
The Daily Telegraph
article also stated that Jonathan Rayner James QC, barrister for Baigent and Leigh, listed 15 incidents ‘where the central theme of the earlier book is copied in Brown’s novel.’ Rayner James also stated that ‘Brown worked from notes researched by his wife Blythe to give “plausibility” to his work.’
[197]

Indeed, Rayner James said Brown had done more than just copy facts from Baigent and Leigh’s book – he had copied the connections joining the facts. ‘He and/or Blythe has intentionally used
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail
in order to save time and effort that independent research would have required,’
The Daily Telegraph
reported.

Even though Brown denied these accusations, he could not deny that one of the characters in his book, Jacques Saunière, has the same surname as Berenger Saunière, a real person who figures prominently in
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail
. ‘One of the characters, Sir Leigh Teabing, picks the book off a shelf and gives his opinion of it. “To my taste, the authors made some dubious leaps of faith in their analysis,” he tells another character. But their fundamental premise is sound, and to their credit, they finally brought the idea of Christ’s bloodline into the mainstream.’
[198]

The Daily Mail
joined the frenzy with an online article stating the lawsuit had done wonders for both books. ‘Ever since the High Court case began over claims that the central theme of Dan Brown’s blockbuster,
The Da Vinci Code
, was copied from
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail
, both books have been flying off the shelves. And both are published by Random House.’

At that time, four million copies of
The Da Vinci Code
had been sold in the UK with 40 million sold worldwide.
The Mail Online
article stated that the trial had seen a phenomenal rise in sales of
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail
from 350 a week, already a good run, to 3,000 a week as interest in the trial grew.
[199]

With journalists from all over the world covering the story, sales for both books would have risen dramatically across the globe, the article continued, ‘But whoever loses may be faced with the total legal costs which legal experts are estimating could greatly exceed £1 million.’ Those same experts, the
Mail Online
claimed, were saying the legal fees could reach £2 million because of the massive amount of time taken in studying the books page by page to find the similarities.
[200]

For Baigent, the week he spent in the witness box was one of the worst experiences of his life, according to a
Guardian
article published in May 2006. ‘I could hardly bear it,’ he said. ‘I was expecting it to be tough, but I was not prepared for the intensity, the ferocity and the personal quality of the attack. There were days when I had to fight the impulse to stand up and walk out of the court and just keep walking.’
[201]

Cross-examined by Random House’s QC, John Baldwin, Baigent seemed to get paler and thinner each day he was in the witness stand. As Baldwin presented page after page for him to point out the passages that Brown allegedly copied, there were long silences as Baigent tried to find the answers.

‘On one occasion, when he was invited to examine a passage in
The Da Vinci Code
and point out exactly which words proved the plagiarism from his own book, the silence lasted for two minutes and 30 seconds, during which time you could hear a clock tick, pages rustle, pens squeak across paper,’
The Guardian
reported. For what seemed an eternity Baigent searched the page for the answer but in the end he turned to the judge, admitting that there was nothing on the page shown that proved it had been plagiarised from his book.
[202]

Meanwhile,
The Guardian
continued, the case had became an international media circus thanks to the reclusive Dan Brown’s daily appearance in court, ‘as neat as if he had just been boil-washed and steam-ironed.’

Facing this kind of pressure one wonders why Baigent and Leigh brought the case in the first place. Maev Kennedy’s article in
The Guardian
said the authors believed they had no choice but to bring the lawsuit against Random House. Their intention had never been for the case to go to court. All they wanted was ‘proper acknowledgment of our work and that would be that.’ But since they couldn’t get the publishers to discuss the matter, they decided they had no other choice but to sue.

The BBC kept up regular coverage of the trial. On 10 March 2006 an article posted on the News web pages reported the latest developments. This time Richard Leigh was questioned by Mr Baldwin QC, who accused him of copying ideas from other books for
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail
. Baldwin asked Leigh if he had copied the idea of Jesus not dying on the cross but marrying Mary Magdalene and having children with her from other sources. Leigh said he’d repeated the facts and not copied them.

Baldwin then attacked Leigh’s assertion that the crucifixion was a fraud – the central theme of
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail
– was also a central theme in
The Da Vinci Code
. As Baldwin pointed out, this idea didn’t appear anywhere in Brown’s novel.
[203]

Baldwin then pointed out that the section in
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail
on the Knights Templar being formed as an administrative arm of the Priory of Sion and their destruction in the Middle Ages, Leigh had used the same wording of the facts as in other texts. Leigh replied, ‘The facts are common historical knowledge being expressed in straightforward language and could well look the same.’ He continued by telling the court, ‘Much of the wording is my own but there are certain turns of phrase that are in common use. If some phrases are not mine, it is something I liked sufficiently to hijack it.’

Across the pond in America, the National Public Radio network were reporting on the case during their
All Things Considered
programme. They interviewed Katherine Rushton, a reporter for
Bookseller
magazine, who was covering the trial in London.
[204]

Rushton painted an interesting picture of the scene when Brown came to give his evidence. The courtroom was crammed, she told programme host Robert Siegel. Journalists from around the world were attending, along with conspiracy theorists and authors hoping to speak to the publishers, and with people fighting over the seats, the scene resembled a circus rather than a courtroom. Rushton said the conspiracy theorists would shake their heads whenever specific details from
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail
were discussed by the judge as if they believed the truth was something different. ‘The judge, a large guy with this sort of big black walrus moustache, speaks very gently and inserts his own jokes, and he knows the subject as well,’ she said. ‘He’ll correct all the authors, on dates if he thinks they’ve got them wrong.’
[205]

When Siegel asked Rushton about the publicity aspects for both books, she said it had ‘gone through the roof.’ Rushton reported that the sales for
The Da Vinci Code
had gone up over the three-week trial by 54 per cent but the more amazing was that the sales of the non-fiction
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail
had soared by 750 per cent. ‘It was registering before, now it’s right near the top of the charts,’ she said. ‘And
The Da Vinci Code
has just pushed past the four million mark here, which is huge.’
[206]

When asked by Siegel how the defence had dealt with the plaintiffs during cross-examination, Rushton replied that they regarded Baigent ‘as a disaster in the witness box, and either a fool, or he was deceiving the court.’

On 13 March, the BBC News site reported on Brown’s testimony that day. Brown said the idea that he’d copied Baigent and Leigh’s work was ‘completely fanciful’. ‘I would like to restate that I remain astounded by the claimants’ choice to file this plagiarism suit,’ Brown continued. ‘For them to suggest, as I understand they do, that I have hijacked and exploited their work is simply untrue.’
[207]

Brown then stated that Blythe had done most of the research because of her passion for the Sacred Feminine and that it was difficult to know exactly which sources of information they used for the novel. ‘On the way, we met with historians and other academics and extended our travels from the Vatican and France to England and Scotland in order to investigate the historical underpinnings of the novel,’ he said.
[208]

According to the BBC News article Brown appeared to be nervous when he was on the witness stand. Instead of his normal tweed jacket and black polo neck shirts, he had gone for a suit and tie. ‘But he was playful with the courtroom and at times he was laughing and even cracking mild jokes.’
[209]

The same day another piece on the trial, by David Sillito, appeared on the BBC News web pages, written from the perspective of a journalist expecting dramatic revelations from Brown on the witness stand. ‘This was a day of high expectations dashed by legal reality,’ Sillito wrote. Court 61 was packed to the rafters and he could not get in for the first 15 minutes of testimony but as the case got bogged down in the legal reality it began to thin out.
[210]

The journalists were out for a dramatic story but Brown, Sillito claimed, had been jostled by reporters on his first day in court and this time he came in via the side entrance looking ‘far from the “jostled” and “harassed” author of his witness statement. Tanned, smiling and confident, he appeared just how a multi-millionaire author should,’ Sillito wrote.

But once the cross-examination began it became clear that there would be little drama in the courtroom that day. ‘It began with an interchange about his computers and then carried on with the details of how his wife, Blythe, would pass on information to him and how he would disagree with her over what was included in the book.’
[211]

There was then a long debate over margins and how each piece of information researched by Brown appeared in
The Da Vinci Code
. While it was not the gripping courtroom drama the journalists were looking for, it was very important for the court to hear when Brown got to know about information that appeared in the book,
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail
.

Sillito’s piece called Brown’s witness statement a ‘masterclass for anyone who might want to write a blockbuster.’ He continued by saying that Brown ‘often wrote his final chapter first and that he then tries to get his characters to reach that end point within the 24 hours within which he sets his books.’