The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail
Recently reprinted is the famous book “The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail”.
First published in 1982, this book was written by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln, and investigated some of the history, legends and hints involving the family of Jesus and various mysterious organisations, including the Knights Templar, which are said to have helped, or maybe hindered, the established church over the centuries.
Some of the theories propounded were later brought to a much wider audience by Dan Brown’s novel, and the subsequent film, “The Da Vinci Code”.
What was extraordinary was that two of the book’s authors (not Lincoln) unsuccessfully sued Brown for plagiarism – extraordinary because it would surely only have been plagiarism if “The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail” had all been made up, which they presumably would deny.
I first read the book in the 1980s. Some of the ideas were not entirely new to me – an earlier book, “The Passover Plot”, had put forward some interesting theories about what actually happened at Easter.
A lot of the content of “The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail” might well be utter rubbish. And quite a bit might actually be true.
But which is which?
Posted by colin on Wednesday 12th July, 2006 at 6:36am