Closer to home, on the steps of Lincoln Cathedral – used to shoot a scene in Westminster Abbey – a nun knelt in prayer for 12 hours in a vigil of dismay. There were instances of protests and boycotts in countries across Asia. The indignation of some reached fever, or fervour, pitch with the release of the 2006 film, starring Hanks as the sleuthing American symbologist Robert Langdon and Audrey Tautou as the quick-witted French cryptologist Sophie Neveu, the murder of whose grandfather in the Louvre begins the tale. All the same, the embattled American author maintained he had done his research and asserted that there was scope for interpretation. In other words, you could infer that at the root of Christianity lies a buried secret.ĭebunking dismissals of that thesis emerged – especially the authoritative pooh-poohing of the Priory of Sion, a pivotal element in the book, as a genuine centuries-old secret society. At the heart of its twisty, code-cracking narrative of physical pursuit and intellectual quest lies a scandalising conspiracy theory: that the early church might have suppressed evidence, hinted at in the paintings of Leonardo, that Jesus married Mary Magdalene, begetting a bloodline that surfaced in France’s Merovingian dynasty. It remains a publishing phenomenon, its clout bound up with its controversial subject matter.

And yet it has sold 80 million copies, and spawned a film, starring Tom Hanks, which has grossed more than $750 million worldwide. It was, notoriously, once denounced by Salman Rushdie as “a novel so bad it gives bad novels a bad name”. The curtain is poised to rise on The Da Vinci Code in the first big theatrical event of 2022 in fact, the year may yield no more newsworthy stage premiere.Īmid the soaring successes of the 21st century’s bestsellers, Dan Brown’s 2003 thriller looms as large and opulent as St Peter’s Basilica, albeit it’s not subject to as much aesthetic devotion.

Dan brown cracking the da vinci code