Richard Leigh

Dec 4 2007 by Laura Davis, Liverpool Daily Post

IT WAS a good job the writer with the knack for a conspiracy theory was fascinated by religious history, because his first book on the subject was so successful that his publishers were keen for him to pen many more.

So Richard Leigh’s literary career moved rapidly away from the role of novelist, which he had initially hoped to become, following the success of his best-selling The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.

Despite publishing only two novels, Erceldoune & Other Stories (2006) and Grey Magic (2007), throughout his life he considered himself to be primarily a writer of fiction, and those who disapproved of his theories may well have agreed.

But even the sceptics had to admit that his books were always thoroughly researched and provided fodder for endless debate about Christianity, even among people who only went to church for Midnight Mass.

At the time, a national critic declared: “It will seem to some a crackpot exercise, but these young men are no fools; they have learning, energy and enthusiasm tempered by scepticism.”

The theory at the centre of The Holy Blood, which he wrote with Michael Baigent and Henry Lincoln, was that Jesus had not died on the cross at all but had escaped with Mary Magdalene to southern France, where their descendants would become the Merovingian Kings.

This idea would also form the backbone of Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code, which Leigh and Baigent were to claim plagiarised their work. They spent £2m pursuing its publisher Random House; however, in April, 2004, a High Court judge threw out the claim, saying the ideas in question were too general to be protected by copyright.

Born in New Jersey to a British father and a Viennese mother, Leigh moved to London in 1974 to try to become a writer.

His photographic memory and natural organisational skills were the perfect tools for research, and he relied on both when preparing the manuscripts for his books.

He wrote many tomes on religious conspiracies, including The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception (1991), The Elixir and the Stone (1997) and The Inquisition, with Michael Baigent.

Leigh died in London of a heart condition. He never married.

Richard Leigh, writer; born August 16, 1943, died November 21, 2007