HOWZAT

The most notable absentee during the hearing was Brown’s wife Blythe who, the author said in cross-examination, did most of his research. He also disclosed that, even when they were in the same house, they communicated largely by e-mail.

The judge said yesterday that no good reason had been given for not calling Blythe Brown to give evidence. Her evidence, he said, could have assisted significantly, although what she might have had to say would not have been crucial to the primary decision on infringement of copyright.

()Blythe Brown entered the picture — from a distance — when cross-examination turned to when Dan Brown had acquired his copy of HBHG, which became a star exhibit in court with its heavy annotations in a variety of coloured inks. The judge was satisfied that Brown had not used it to write his synopsis of DVC, but had relied on other sources provided by his wife.

“However, his contention that neither he nor his wife acquired or read HBHG until very late in the writing process is rejected. Blythe Brown probably acquired it no later than November 2000 and was using it for research, although Dan Brown either did not know that or did not use the material when writing the synopsis.”

In his evidence, the judge said, Brown had tried to marginalise the importance of when he or his wife acquired their copy of HBHG.

The judge had his view on Brown as witness and researcher, at neither of which he shone. “In reality Mr Brown knew very little about how the historical background was researched. He in my view simply accepted Blythe Brown’s research material when incorporating it into the writing of part two of DVC.”

In the witness box, Dan Brown displayed a remarkable inability to remember dates, and the pressure of cross-examination from Mr Rayner James, causing the witness’s face to colour perceptibly, is likely to remain in his memory for some time.

Admitting that it was probably an understatement, the judge noted that the hearing had generated considerable interest in the wider world outside Court 61 on the tenth floor of the Royal Courts of Justice building. “This case has not been about Mr Brown’s skill and reputation as a thriller writer and should have no impact on it whatsoever,” the judge said.

On the contrary, your lordship. There is an unworthy view circulating that the whole thing was engineered to boost sales of DVC and HBHG, both of which happen to bear the same publisher’s imprint, Random House.

“I am not in a position to comment on whether this cynical view is correct, but I would say that if it was such a collaborative exercise Mr Baigent and Mr Brown both went through an extensive ordeal in cross-examination which they are likely to remember for some time,” the judge noted in the full version of his decision.

But he conceded that DVC had led to a revival in sales of HBHG, culminating in an increase arising from the trial. “The claimants are apparently upset at the way in which they have been treated in DVC. I find that surprising.”

He did not see Brown’s use of an anagram of Baigent and Leigh’s names to create the character of Sir Leigh Teabing in DVC, as being anything other than a compliment. And he went on, with evident relief: “As usual with books that attract a lot of publicity they have attracted the wrath of the literary experts of the world. Fortunately it is not part of my judgement to assess the literary worth of the books, or even the truth behind them.”

He concluded: “I suppose in the world of publication 40 million buyers cannot be wrong.”

A KEY TO THE TWO BOOKS

• The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail explores the theory that Jesus married Mary Magdalene, that they had children who grew up in France and that their descendants married into the early Merovingian kings of France. They speculate that the bloodline continues today, that a secret society, the Priory of Sion, passes on the secret to a select few each generation while the Roman Catholic Church suppresses the truth. HBHG suggests also that the Crucifixion was faked with Pontius Pilate’s connivance and that Jesus escaped with his family to the South of France. They suggest that the Holy Grail is Christ’s bloodline. The writers say that the book, a bestseller in 1982, is “historical conjecture”.

• The Da Vinci Code bases its plot on the same theory that Christ’s bloodline still survives, but Dan Brown does not go so far as to suggest that Christ escaped the Crucifixion. The author, a Christian, has said that such conjecture undermines the whole foundation of the Christian religion.

  Brown has claimed throughout the case that, although he consulted HBHG at a late stage of writing DVC, his plot ideas came mainly from other sources such as The Templar Revelation and The Woman With The Alabaster Jar.

  Brown has maintained throughout that DVC is a novel and nothing more, pure fiction and not even historical conjecture.

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