Baigent Down But Not Out

The Guardian interviews NZ born writer and historian Michael Baigent – “the man who sued Dan Brown and lost.” Baigent co-authored The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail with Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln. Baigent and Leigh sued Random House – publishers of both Holy Blood and Brown’s blockbuster The Da Vinci Code – for breach of intellectual property, and were resoundingly defeated. “We weren’t just trying to get a bit of Dan Brown’s money, and we were certainly not doing it for the publicity,” says Baigent. “I’ve calculated that I’d have to sell an extra nine million copies of the Holy Blood to pay the legal bill – that’s very expensive publicity indeed. But what have writers got except the intellectual copyright in their work?” Baigent’s new work, The Jesus Papers, is published by Harper Collins.