Henry Lincoln: "The story is true... Only the Facts have changed."

The story is true... Only the facts have changed.

I have promised to say a little more about Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code. Here then, are some not-too-serious observations:

Both novel and not-very-successful film were entertaining rubbish, but I found it slightly irritating that Mr Brown seemed to be implying that he has based his story upon accurate facts. I can’t comment on his ideas about Leonardo, or Opus Dei ... but, for Pierre Plantard - the Priory of Sion - Jesus - Mary Magdalene - and so on, I can only say: “Facts?!!? I’d love to see your sources, Honeybunch.“

The Priory of Sion, Mr Brown tells us, is “a real organisation”? Really? Who says so? (And that’s a pertinent question.) “... Paris’s Bibliothèque Nationale,” he claims, “discovered parchments known as Les Dossiers Secrets ...”
Oh, I give up! The Bibliothèque Nationale has never ‘discovered’ anything - and the Dossiers Secrets are not ‘parchments’.

I could go on ... All or any of these ideas should be perfectly acceptable in a work of fiction – but here they are loudly proclaimed to be truths, and millions of people have been seriously misled and continue fervently to believe in the veracity of Mr Brown’s fantasies.

Howsoever and be that as it may ... a fictional treatment of the story is no bad idea. And it should not be forgotten that, before I stumbled upon Rennes-le-Château, I was a working writer for television, already with a couple of hundred screen credits. They were all drama scripts – Lost Treasure of Jerusalem ... ? was my first documentary film - so it’s not surprising that thoughts of ‘fictionalising’ the Saunière story had drifted into my head.

However, I felt that, being committed to the reality of Rennes-le-Château, I would now find ‘playing with it’ rather uncomfortable. But I was sure that someone, some day, would see the possibilities. True, I know a great deal more about the subject than does Mr Brown, but some of his story-telling techniques seem to me to be more than a little laboured and he has missed some splendid chances. (His knowledge of France and French culture, I find somewhat limited. And who, en passant, has ever encountered a Frenchman with a name like “Bézu Fache”?)

I consider his principle failure, though, to lie in his choice of hero.