Michael Wood
Jeux d’esprit
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail
By Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln
Jonathan Cape 480pp £9.95 order from our bookshop
Someone was obviously producing this material, but their real object remained unclear. At times we nearly dismissed the whole affair as an elaborate joke, a hoax of extravagant proportions. If this were true, however … and if one invests so much time, energy and resources in a hoax, can it really be called a hoax at all? In fact the interlocking skeins and the overall fabric were less a joke than a work of art – a display of ingenuity, suspense, brilliance, intricacy, historical knowledge and architectonic complexity worthy of, say, James Joyce.
So the authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail sum up the arcane ‘documents’ out of which they spin the tale of ‘the single most shattering secret of the last two thousand years.’ The secret is, briefly, that Christ escaped the cross, married Mary Magdalene and had children whose decendants have maintained his ‘blood royal’ across the intervening centuries. In the Dark Ages they married into the Merovingian royal family. In the thirteenth century they were protected by the Cathars. Now, it is alleged, they constitute a powerful secret society to which the great temporal lords of our day still pay respect. The Second Coming, in short, will be the presentation of Jesus’ lineal heir.
This book has raised fury among learned reviewers and occasioned a spate of apoplectic letters to the Times. Some critics have even been so unkind as to suggest that a reputable publishing house should not have printed such a ‘farrago’. This is rather ingenuous, as the book’s first appearance in
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Foreign-policy pundits, then as now, tended to lack subtlety, even if they could be highly articulate about a nation they did not like very much.'
Read Lucy Wooding's review of Clare Jackson's 'Devil-Land', which has won the @WolfsonHistory prize.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-view-from-across-the-channel
From the First World War to Evelyn Waugh: @DaisyfDunn takes us into the world of Oxford between the wars.
Generously supported by @Lit_Review
#CVHF #AmazingHistory #UniversityofOxford
'That they signify something is not in question. Yet how to interpret the symbols of a long-vanished society? What would the inhabitants of the 50th century make of the ubiquity of crosses in Europe?'
Hilary Davies on the art of the Lascaux caves.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/poems-of-the-underground