I have received a number of requests for an explanation of why I did not join with Baigent and Leigh in the case for plagiarism which they brought against Dan Brown.

I will confess that this is a subject which I have been reluctant to approach, as it touches upon matter which I find extremely distasteful and which, in large part, has been the cause of my previous years of silence. It is, however, a subject which has been hovering in the background for too long and which I have been aware that, in the interests of honesty, I would eventually have to confront. Let me begin with what was publicly reported:
My non-participation, according to the Press, was presumed to be “due to ill-health”. This is nonsense. I do not believe that the fact that I now find walking an extremely painful exercise, has any effect upon my brain! (Though I leave this to others to judge.)
Not surprisingly, I was approached by Baigent’s and Leigh’s literary agent in an attempt to persuade me to join with them in the action and I was bound to give the matter my serious consideration. Especially since it is obvious that The da Vinci Code - (which I shall deal with at another time) - had drawn extensively upon our work. For example: M. Plantard and his Prieuré de Sion would never have been heard of outside France – (and perhaps not even there) - had we not reported our researches and personal meetings in Holy Blood, Holy Grail.
However I decided against, for several reasons :
1. Our book had been in the public domain for almost a quarter of a century and many writers – (including Richard Leigh’s sister) – had used our material and our hypothesis. Why had we made no earlier objection?
2. Millions of people in their twenties and thirties had been too young even to be aware of HBHG when it was first published. Our hypothesis, as expressed in Brown’s book, came to them with the freshness and power of a thunder-bolt. Indeed, we had ourselves pointed out that a special curiosity of biblical scholarship is its ability to bury a ‘new’ idea, so that it must be repeated afresh for each new generation.
3. HBHG had been a best-seller on publication. Not many authors have the good fortune to see their work back in the best-seller lists after more than twenty years.
4. Our royalties had received a considerable boost from Brown’s book. Where, therefore, lay our cause for complaint?

The answer, it seemed to me, lay in money. The very great deal of money pouring into Mr Brown’s coffers. But what made me think that here lay a great part of my co-authors’ motivation? To answer this question, I must pose another.
Would it be considered proper that only two out of three writers of a book should be entitled to share its royalties? More specifically, should not I, as one of the co-authors of our second book – The Messianic Legacy – be expected to receive my one-third share?
I would imagine that most people would consider the answer to this question to be “Yes”. However, such is not the case. My fellow-authors found a means to retain my third, suggesting that it was for me to prove that I had any rights therein.
Here lies the aspect of this business which I find most distasteful. That they had conceived of such an idea, I find incredible – that they carried it out, I consider despicable. Even were their arguments valid – which I do not consider them to be – the selfish ingratitude strikes me as being appalling. Such venality is, in my eyes, beneath contempt. I had given them - freely - the results of my years of research.

I do not wish to give the impression that I am seeking recompense ... the sums involved are small ... but to indicate attitude. It seems that there are some who set a higher store on money than do others. Perhaps from this, you may gain an insight into my reasons for ‘keeping my distance’.
The above is, I am afraid, a piece of unpleasantness ... but it is part of the reality of this story. I said, as I began to recount this sorry tale, that I find it difficult to deal with. Nor do I wish to dwell on such matters. However, now begun and because I have promised honest replies to the questions put to me on this web-site, I feel constrained to get rid of the unpleasantness in order to return to more entertaining and instructive matters. To do so, I must deal with one other allied matter. But not now. Enough, I think, is enough for the time being. Part Two of this outrageous saga will follow at a later date.

*******

Of more interest is something which has just come to light during my sifting through my archive. In Key to the Sacred Pattern, (pp40/41), I report how, in 1971, Gérard de Sède had sent me the first photographs of “The Poussin Tomb”. Here is one in which he depicts himself as the kneeling shepherd.

Looking at this image again, after so many years, reminds me of what we have lost. The demented avarice which led criminals to attempt to break into the tomb ... and the thoughtless vandalism which made the owner destroy it ... have deprived us of who knows what precious knowledge?
What might we have learned if expert investigation had been made.?
The destruction of the tomb was a huge loss. But at least it taught me to ignore the arrogant and blinkered opinions of ”experts” such as Anthony Blunt!

*****

This is not the first time I have suggested that one should be cautious about what one reads.

Don’t BELIEVE something just because someone - (myself included) - says it. Here’s one amusing example of the reason why ... !
 
I recently had my attention drawn to the following snippet on the inter-net.   It’s on a site dealing with Dr Who – a popular series for which Mervyn Haisman and I wrote many years ago.  This is an extraordinary example of how many gross errors can be perpetrated in just one sentence by one careless writer – (in this case, by one Shannon Sullivan):
 
Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln ... met on Emergency Ward 10, for which Haisman contributed scripts and Lincoln performed; Lincoln had few authorial credits to his name at this point, while Haisman had also written for Doctor Finlay's Casebook and No Hiding Place.

1.      We did NOT MEET on Emergency – Ward 10.   

2.      Mervyn did NOT CONTRIBUTE scripts for Emergency – Ward 10.
 
3.      I did NOT ‘PERFORM’  in Emergency – Ward 10.

4.       I DID, however, write 33 episodes for Emergency – Ward 10

         I’m not sure what counts as “FEW authorial credits” , ...But:
5.       At the time we met, I had about 40 .
 
I think Mr Sullivan may probably be right about Mervyn’s scripts – but I can’t be absolutely sure. However,

EVERY OTHER ONE OF HIS “FACTS” IS WRONG..
BEWARE ... BEWARE!
CHECK AND DOUBLE-CHECK EVERYTHING

My apologies for another untoward pause, this time occasioned by work - (yes, I am still working!) – and also the slow sifting through my library and archive, which have been buried in boxes following my departure from the Cotswolds. And extraordinary treasures are coming to light - not all of them serious ... as, for example: Those of you who have read Key to the Sacred Pattern may remember my account (pp 161/162) of the mad moment when Gérard de Sède gave me a black eye. Here is the ocular (!) proof ... a fun photograph taken en souvenir by Henri Buthion some few moments after the event. It is typical of dear Henri’s punctilious attention to detail, that he seems to have accompanied his ice-cubes with a table napkin of exactly the right shade to match my shirt. (Though both seem to clash with my hair!) However, some more serious records are surfacing, which I hope to be sharing with you shortly.

* * * *

Yesterday, I received yet another enquiry regarding my old BBC Chronicle films, which served to remind me that I had promised to expand upon that ‘ludicrous tale’ - and attempt to answer the question: “Why are they not (legally) available?”

The background is somewhat complex - and the definitive answer to that question will lie, if anywhere, in the archives of the BBC. I don’t doubt that the personalities involved will long have faded into the obscurity of retirement ... or further. I can only, therefore, recount my end of the saga. Doubtless, other fragments of the absurd story may survive of which I am not aware, though I do possess some interesting tape-recordings of meetings which certainly shed some light. (I intend to investigate the possibility of making them available on this site.)

The tale, then, begins almost forty years ago, in 1972, after the transmission of the first Chronicle film, The Lost Treasure of Jerusalem...?
It was clear that another Rennes-le-Château programme would pull in a sizeable audience, who were already crying out for more. The Saunière story was going to be good for viewing figures. The inevitable follow-up had begun to shape itself in my head. But I could see that there was a great deal more time-consuming research to be done in France.

However, I was lucky enough to be offered work on a French film and this meant that my spare time could be devoted to hunting through the treasures in the Bibliothéque Nationale.
And so I had been working in Paris for some months, when I received an unexpected phone call from the BBC. (This story, too, is to be found in Key to the Sacred Pattern - pp 93 et seq.)
This call was the first intimation that someone had been attempting to get the follow-up Rennes-le-Château film off the ground - without my knowledge. I had been anticipating working on an eventual second film with Andrew Maxwell Hyslop, the director who had made the first . But now I learned that he had moved elsewhere in the Corporation. My caller was another BBC director - one Roy Davies.
It seemed that a viewer of Lost Treasure had, without any evidence, convinced Davies that he had found Saunière’s gold. Here was a programme with a built-in audience - without any need for me or my further researches. So Davies had set about mounting a film of the digging up of “the Treasure of the Millionaire Priest”.

Knowing nothing of Rennes-le-Château, nor of the delicacy needed when handling this little community, he was committed to his filming dates, with a crew already on stand-by, when he discovered that he was not dealing with a ‘usual’ kind of location. He was a stranger. The villagers were suspicious of strangers. They slammed the door in his face.

He was, therefore forced, with extreme reluctance, to turn to me for help - which meant a fair amount of umble-pie eating, with abject apologies for having kept me in the dark and urgent pleas for my assistance. Such grovelling would stick in anybody’s craw - and it was certainly not calculated to endear me to Davies - especially as it quickly became obvious that his ‘treasure’ was fool’s gold and that, without me, he would have no film - plus the black mark of having wasted a sizeable chunk of Chronicle’s budget.)
Although we went on to make the following two R-le-C films together, there always remained an under-current of mutual discomfort and distrust. And it seems that he never gave up trying to make a Rennes-le-Château programme of his own - (I know of at least one other abortive attempt with yet another treasure-hunting fantasist.)

The ever-present warning notes clanged most clearly when we were making The Shadow of the Templars. I had been contracted to write a ninety-minute programme - which was duly made. It was not until we were in the final stages of putting the film together in the studio, that Davies suddenly informed me that I would only have a sixty-minute slot. I would have to cut thirty minutes from the film - no easy feat.

Now it was in this programme that I first revealed the landscape geometry and I had filmed the curious pool hidden by the copse of trees in the centre of the pentacle. (Key to the Sacred Pattern pp133 et seq.) Davies appeared nervous about this. ‘Someone’ he said, had told him that the pool was used by locals for washing their clothes! This was a patently ridiculous idea. What locals? The aerial photograph shows its isolation :

Nevertheless, this was the explanation which he apparently preferred to my question marks and it was this strange water basin with the exploration of the key locations of the geometry which I had to lose. The un-transmitted film was destroyed ... a tragedy compounded by the fact that, anticipating the film to come, I had no good photographic record of the find. Only a very few unsatisfactory shots survive, taken on my first visit to the strange site, in late January 1975. Mere visual note-taking - this is the sole image to give any proper sense of scale:

And there is this shadowy glimpse of the entire surface:

Its construction was of stone. The walls were sheer-sided and the water maintained a constant depth of about three feet. Like the “Poussin Tomb”, the pool is now gone.

With the passing of time, I eventually assembled the material for a fourth film. Although other producers were interested and my relationship with Davies was not too comfortable, I felt a - perhaps unnecessary - obligation to take it to the BBC, where he was now editor of Timewatch, the successor programme to Chronicle.

My archive contains an interesting tape-recording of our discussion, when I showed him the extraordinary new developments in the research. He became excited by the latest discoveries and we agreed to set to work. As editor of Timewatch, he would not be directing this film – which, I confess was something of a relief to me. He duly appointed a director and sent us off to make the pre-production reconnaissance trip, at the end of which he would join us to see the new locations. It was during this trip, in early1990, that yet another discovery was to be made.

The geometry appeared to indicate the importance of a location a mile or so to the north of Rennes-le-Château. Curiously, this fell at a place which was labelled on the map as ‘Grand Camp’. We decided to investigate and were astonished to find enormous stone walls and a huge assemblage of bee-hive huts.
When Davies arrived on the following day, we took him to see what we had found. He was as impressed and puzzled as were we. The site, he said, reminded him of nothing so much as the ancient City of Mycenae. We were more than happy with the discoveries to which we had been led by the geometry. Certainly, our film was going to raise some remarkable and intriguing questions.

A day later I was left to continue my researches on the ground, while the other two set off for England to make final preparations and to set the date for filming.
At this point, something changed.

On the next morning, I received a call from a worried director. He told me that, on the way home, Davies had said that he wanted to make this film “without Lincoln”. The director had pointed out that it could hardly be made without explaining how the new discovery had been made ... and that led directly back to my work. Even so, the director was worried by Davies’ attitude as he and his crew were booked and we had still been given no start date. In the ensuing weeks, Davies continued to defer giving the go-ahead and eventually cancelled the production, which I later made with TV2 Danmark. This film, incorporating more material and titled The Secret, was repeated numerous times on the Discovery Channel.
But at the BBC a strange hostility was developing. As soon as video-recordings became available, viewers had begun writing to tell me that when they asked for copies of the Rennes-le-Château documentaries, they were told that these were not available as “there was no public interest”. This seemed a curious response – especially as I had been approached by BBC Enterprises – (the separate and independent commercial arm of the Corporation.) This organisation had come to me with the idea of packaging the three films for the video market, with new introductory and concluding sections, which I was to make.

I thought that this was a good idea – and a contract was duly signed. But before the ink was dry, I received a telephone call to tell me that Enterprises would not be able to proceed with the project. No explanation was forthcoming. And then Timewatch produced The History of a Mystery, in which, by debunking a rather silly book, they tried to destroy the Saunière story, labelling it as ‘pseudo-history’.
What has happened? This is a confusing tale and it is not easy to draw together all the various elements, but something curious has occurred. Why the complete change of attitude at the BBC? Why the refusal to sell the films – though one of them is now available free of charge on the Internet?
Those of you who have taken the trouble to check my findings know that I have been careful to restrict myself to “that which is demonstrable and provable”. The mathematics and the geometry stand. Why do some people wish to pretend that they do not?
Perhaps it is all no more than a question of ‘personalities’, but ... I regret ... copies of the Chronicle films are not available – except illegally. But - grieve not – they’re decades out-of-date and all the material is available in my non-BBC films and books.

The season at Rennes-le-Château is coming to an end and I have been astonished at how busy the village continues to be – which explains the gap since I last posted any up-dates.
Rennes-le-Château is still slowly recovering from the unfortunate effects of the previous municipal regime and a much happier atmosphere is now beginning to be felt.
For those who have never visited the village, the changes which it suffered under the last mayor may come as something of a surprise.   For someone like me – with forty years of acquaintance – there is much to regret.
Saunière’s Domaine is in desperate need of repair and restoration.   Brickwork is crumbling, the Tour Magdala and its belvedere require attention.   And yet, more than enough money for the work was wasted on a totally unnecessary new Town Hall.
For me, the saddest of the changes has been the desecration of Bérenger’s  last resting place.
He purchased his plot at the top of his cemetery, in perpetuity, so that he could forever watch over his flock, with Marie at his side.   Now his tomb lies outside the cemetery wall – and in unconsecrated ground.   Worse still, his grave is turned north/south ... a pagan burial.  I consider this to be a cruel thing to do to a priest and I find it unforgivable.   That the Church allowed it, I find astonishing.   
However, as some small amends, APARC has recently placed a plaque at the original site.  And Marie’s resting place beside him is now once more marked.

*   *   *  *   * 

I have promised to deal further with the curious attitude of Jean-Luc Chaumeil, the BBC’s now preferred “expert” in the matter of Rennes-le-Château.
The story is amusing if unimportant, but it demonstrates how easily fantasy can become accepted fact.
 It began in 1973, when I received a letter from Gérard de Sède.   (See my Key to the Sacred Pattern - pp116 et seq).   In it, he told me that with ‘one of his colleagues’, he had found Bérenger Saunière’s treasure and he was prepared to offer me photographs.   I did not fall for what was an obvious ‘con’ and the fraudulent photographs were eventually sold to a magazine.   (Charivari, No 18, Paris, Oct-Dec 1973).
The accompanying article, titled The treasure exists – we have seen it, was written by de Sède’s colleague - who proved to be the said Jean-Luc Chaumeil.   What sort of ‘expert’ is this?  One must certainly question his reliability!
Some few years later, I was preparing my third BBC film on Rennes-le-Château.   Pierre Plantard, in his role as Grand Master of the Prieuré de Sion, had agreed to cooperate and said that he would appoint someone to speak on screen as their spokesman.   To my amusement, this spokesman proved to be Chaumeil.
All was prepared for the filming, which was to take place in a small Parisian art gallery owned by Chaumeil’s mother.   As mama was brushing her son’s hair for his appearance before the camera Plantard, at the very last moment, decided that he needed no spokesman – he would speak for himself.   I was delighted – Chaumeil and his mother were incensed.
I suspect that it was this incident that launched Chaumeil’s hostility to myself, the Prieuré, Plantard and all his works.
Time passed and then, at the height of the Da Vinci Code excitement, Chaumeil was interviewed by the French newspaper Le Figaro.   After so many years, the filming fiasco evidently still rankled.  Amongst other inventions he made the ludicrous claim that I addressed Pierre Plantard as “Your Majesty”!  What, one wonders, makes someone decide to invent such nonsense?
However, I have since seen a Belgian documentary film in which this rubbish is repeated as ‘fact’.   
 
De omnibus dubitandum ... (Don’t believe anything ... !)
Chaumeil is one of our least trustworthy of witnesses.

*   *   *  *   *

While on this subject – another highly entertaining ‘witness’ appears in the recent film Bloodline, on which I have also been asked to comment.   This is a person who gives the impression that he is one of the Prieuré’s Inner Circle and possesses a great deal of “secret” knowledge.   
The director, seeking my opinion, showed me some material which was not included in the film.  Here is the relevant portion of my e-mailed response:

 ... I gave up on his credibility (and read no more) after his e-mail description of Baigent & Leigh flying over the pool in the triangular field.    Does his description not include ‘a stormy day’ (real) and ‘flowers on an altar’ (imaginary)?   That garbage is total fantasy, born in a ... dream world somewhere!   He read my account in Key to the S P (see p 135 et seq) and is embroidering his partial memory thereof.   That trip happened a good six months before I’d ever met Leigh (who, as far as I know, has never visited R-le-C, either in the air or on foot!)

This is a very good example of how people half-remember what they have read and then are too lazy, or too foolish, to check their ‘facts’ before giving utterance.
I found the description of Baigent’s and Leigh’s ”flight” particularly hilarious.   It stems from my statement that I needed “ ... to know more than a map can tell me.   Aerial photographs seem an effective means of exploring the landscape ... ”.
Our ‘witness’ had forgotten the rest of the sentence: “ ... and are readily available from the French Geographical Institute,“ from whence, for a small fee, I acquired them.
Ignoring the fact that, at the relevant time, neither of my co-authors had yet heard of Rennes-le-Château, the thought of us having the resources to own – or even hire – a flying machine is too funny for words.   Though I have learned over the years that many people ... (including an erstwhile Literary Editor of a supposedly responsible Sunday paper) ... are convinced that Holy Blood, Holy Grail made us millionaires ! If only ... !