Dan Brown - Under Oath?

[Shade]

Interestingly, although Baigent and Leigh lost the case, the judge was critical of Dan Brown's evidence, making it clear he thought he was lying at times:

Mr Brown's evidence is of no assistance because of his vagueness. ... In the synopsis for The Da Vinci Code he says it was written long before they bought or consulted The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. I have considerable difficulties with that statement.

I cannot accept the book was acquired at a much later time if it is going to be seriously contended that extensive research is gone into before The Da Vinci Code is written.

What is extraordinary about Mr Brown's evidence is that he appears to have acquired all of the books that cover this area apart from the one that is described as essential reading.

So Brown doesn't quite leave court without a stain on his character. (Of course, the fact that he wrote The Da Vinci Code means he arrived at court with a very considerable stain on his character.) The judge was also scathing of the excuses for Blythe Brown's failure to attend to give evidence:

It is quite clear that Mr Brown has not been able to provide all the answers as to the material which Blythe prepared for him.


Second I do not regard the reasons put forward in the third witness statement for her absence as satisfactory.

How DVC was researched and created is vital to the issues in this case.
Blythe Brown's role in that exercise is crucial and I do not accept that there are reasons of a credible nature put forward as to why she has not appeared to give evidence.

Still, that's nothing to his swingeing attack on Baigent's (or as the judge called him, an author of "pretend historical books") evidence:

Mr Baigent was a poor witness. Those are not my words - they are the words of his own counsel in his written closing submissions.


Those words do not in my view do justice to the inadequacy of Mr Baigent's performance.

His evidence was comprehensively destroyed by the thorough and searching cross examination of Mr Baldwin QC for the defendant.

I can place no reliance on any part of his evidence.

From a High Court Judge, that's real handbags-at-dawn stuff.

All this from this page.

 

[Mari]

"Fortunately it is not part of my judgement to assess the literary worth of the books or even the truth behind them...I suppose in the world of publication 40m buyers cannot be wrong."

And yet...

 

[Stewart]

Russian getting in on the game now...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2129945,00.html

 

[HermioneWeasley]

i looked up some of perdue's ooks on amazon. I might read one of them to compare to da vinci code, but i'll get it from the library, thank you very much. However, if you go into a bookstore, for example borders, most of them have a huge display of da vinci code related books -da vinci code, angels and demons, the last templar, the da vinci hoax, the ultimate guide to the da vinci code, holy blood, holy grail, etc...This is a popular topic right now and a lot of books are written about it. So what would happen if all those authors started sueing each other? They'd get nowhere. And i haven't read perdue, but i doubt it's so much like the da vinci code that the author should sue it.