From this we can see that Brown believes there is a vast grey area around what it means to be Christian and while millions of readers may fall into the first category, the really vitriolic criticisms of his books have largely come from those who fall into the other two camps.
But what of science and religion, another theme that Brown explores throughout his books? ‘When science starts tackling the really tough questions, it starts using phrases like uncertainty principle, margin of error, theory of relativity,’ he told his audience. ‘Slowly physics turns into metaphysics and numbers become imaginary numbers and even matter itself comes into question. Particle physicists now believe that matter that is everything around us is really just trapped energy.’
He then went on to say that ‘these same physicists are now quietly asking if it is merely coincidence if the vast majority of ancient religious texts, including the Bible, describe God as energy and God as all around us.’
This interplay of science and religion, he continued, was what fascinated him about Leonardo da Vinci. ‘Right now for the first time in history the line between science and religion is starting to blur. Particle physicists exploring sub-atomic levels are witnessing an inter-connectivity of all things and they are having religious experiences. At the same time Buddhist monks are reading physics books and learning about things they have believed in their hearts forever and yet have been unable to quantify.’
Perhaps key to understanding the way in which Brown weaves science and religion together in his books is his understanding and acceptance of science and religion as partners. ‘They are simply two different languages telling the same story and are both manifestations of man’s quest to understand the divine. While science falls on the answers religion savours the questions.’
Brown also told the crowd that no one is born a Christian and there is nothing in the make up of our genes or DNA that determines what religion a newborn baby will be. ‘We are born into a culture where we worship the God of our fathers,’ he said. ‘It is truly that simple. Now more than ever there is enormous danger in believing that our version of the truth is absolute, that everyone who doesn’t think like we do is wrong and therefore an enemy.’
Brown claimed he wrote The Da Vinci Code to explore how the shift away from the world of gods and goddesses occurred and why it took place. He said he wrote it partly as a personal spiritual quest and not as something that would be as controversial as the book had become. ‘I am aware there are those out there who disagree with me who say awful things about me who make little pictures and I know that a lot of them have published long lists of my shortcoming, my errors and my mistakes.’ But he felt that a lot of the critics had completely missed his main point that ‘prior to 2000 years ago we lived in a world of gods and goddesses. Today we live in a world solely of gods.’
He continued by saying that in most of the religions around the world women are, what he called, ‘second class citizens’ and there is no reason there shouldn’t be women priests. ‘Why is this even an issue?’
But Brown is also happy with multiple versions of where we came from. He told the crowd about one of his critics going on radio proclaiming he was on the air because he’d been called by God to fix the errors Brown had written in the novel. ‘He told the interviewer that he was angry with me for teaching inaccurate history. The interviewer pointed out that some scientists might consider this scholar guilty of the same thing for having taught his own children that evolution never happened and that they had come from two people named Adam and Eve. Everyone is entitled to believe what they believe. If you find someone’s ideas absurd or offensive just listen to somebody else.’
During this talk, it was clear that Brown was wearying of the criticism levelled at him saying that even the media were getting tired of the name-calling and the absurd debunking ‘with several going so far as to quote Shakespeare’s line from Hamlet about protesting too much.’
He told the audience that his critics had clearly read different books and been taught by different teachers in different schools than he had. ‘Some of these people sound absolutely certain about their truths and of that I am envious,’ he said, adding that he still had a lot of questions. ‘But I have written a novel in which fictional characters explore some of these questions for possible answers. I think readers can decide for themselves how much of this novel they want to believe. As far as us all making a bit too much of this, a very wise British priest noted that Christian theology has survived the writings of Galileo and the writings of Darwin and will surely survive the writings of some novelist from New Hampshire.’[189]
But instead of waning as Brown had hoped, the tide of criticism and controversy was to get worse and two years later he found himself in the witness box at the Old Bailey.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
* * *
MEDIA FRENZY AT THE OLD BAILEY
While Brown was facing an ever-increasing attack from the Church and religious groups in America and around the world, he again found himself entangled in a court case. It seemed to be never-ending.
In August 2005, Lewis Perdue brought a lawsuit against Brown, claiming he had plagiarised his two novels, The Da Vinci Legacy and Daughter of God. When Perdue lost his case, Brown breathed a sigh of relief. With that out of the way he’d hoped he could concentrate on his next book, but that hope proved to be short-lived. Nine months later he found himself embroiled in another court case and this one was at the Old Bailey.
The authors of one of the books Brown had used as his research – and had credited in his novel – decided Brown had infringed their copyright and mounted a lawsuit against his publisher, Random House, in the UK. These authors were Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh who, together with Henry Lincoln, had written The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, published in 1982. The central idea to their book was that Mary Magdalene and Jesus had married and had a child, and the bloodline of that union continues today.
Brown was stunned by their action. ‘I have been shocked at their reaction,’ he said in his High Court witness statement, and why shouldn’t he be? He’d given them an accolade in the novel itself when he created the character of Sir Leigh Teabing, an anagram of Baigent and Leigh.
Brown hadn’t thought up Teabing until he was well into researching and writing the book. ‘I initially conceived the character because Langdon and Sophie needed somewhere to rest and eat before moving on to London,’ he explained. ‘As well as providing a safe haven for Sophie and Langdon, I needed to create a character who could say some of the more far-fetched and controversial things that I initially had Langdon saying.’ In his witness statement Brown said he wanted to ensure Langdon’s integrity was preserved, enabling him to play devil’s advocate, provide some historical detail and allow Langdon to stand back a little.
So Brown decided to use the character of Teabing as a nod to the two authors. He had several reasons for doing this. The first was because The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail was in his opinion a more traditional book than many of the other sources he was using. ‘It seemed a more fitting match for my Teabing character, whom I had crafted as an old British knight.’[190]
One of Brown’s traits as a writer is to use the names of people he knows and cares about or respects, which was another reason he included Baigent and Leigh. Though he didn’t know them, he respected their book because it was the first to bring ‘the idea of the bloodline into the mainstream,’ Brown explained. ‘I decided to use the name Leigh Teabing as a playful tribute to Mr Baigent and Mr Leigh. I have never once used a novel to denigrate anyone, and most certainly my use of the name Leigh Teabing was no exception.’ Brown was hurt that the two authors would have brought a lawsuit against him when he had paid them a tribute in his novel. Perhaps he hadn’t counted on The Da Vinci Code being so phenomenally successful or that Baigent and Leigh might want to ride on his coat-tails in the hope that their book sales would also skyrocket?
In his witness statement Brown said he saw a document, title
d General Statements, during the lawsuit. This, he said, made ‘a number of serious allegations against me. The document contains numerous sweeping statements which seem to me to be completely fanciful.’ Indeed, it concluded that Brown had lifted the overall design of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail – its governing themes, its logic, its arguments – for his own novel. ‘This is simply not true,’ he asserted.
Brown claimed that there were vast amounts of information in The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail that he never used for his novel. In his witness statement he said that comparing the first half of the two books would illustrate that there is enough of a gulf between them that no one could say the design, logic and arguments were the same. ‘And where there is overlap of ideas,’ Brown said, ‘the fact remains that I used The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail merely as one of a number of reference sources for some of the information which The Da Vinci Code sets out.’ One of the central questions in The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail is whether Christ really did die on the cross. ‘This is not an idea that I would ever have found appealing.’[191]
Bringing the resurrection of Christ into question is something Brown would never go near. In his witness statement he made it plain that having been raised a Christian and gone to Bible camp he was fully aware that the crucifixion and the resurrection were absolutely central to Christian faith. ‘The resurrection is perhaps the sole controversial Christian topic about which I would not dare write. Suggesting a married Jesus is one thing, but undermining the resurrection strikes at the very heart of Christian belief.’
As the lawsuit got under way Brown was still reeling from the accusations against him. ‘I find it absurd to suggest that I have organised and presented my novel in accordance with the same general principles as those in The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail,’ he said. The accusation that he had copied the facts as well as ‘the relationship between the facts and the evidence to support the facts, is simply not true.’ Brown also maintained that The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail was one of four books that he mentions by name in his novel. The other three were The Templar Revelation by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince, The Woman with the Alabaster Jar by Margaret Starbird and The Goddess in the Gospels, also by Starbird.[192]
‘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 Gu
ardian 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.
The Dan Brown Enigma Page 14