Leigh, Richard 1943-2007 (Richard Harris Leigh)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born August 16, 1943, in NJ; died of heart disease, November 21, 2007, in London, England. Alternative historian and author. The public at large might never have encountered the name of Richard Leigh had author Dan Brown not published his blockbuster novel The Da Vinci Code. Leigh was the coauthor of a work of speculative history titled The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, originally published in 1982 and, according to Leigh and one of his collaborators, the unauthorized source of Brown's best seller. They unsuccessfully sued Brown's publisher for plagiarism in 2005, and Leigh became a frequent face in cable television documentaries and national television news magazines. In truth, Leigh had been writing "alternative history" for more than twenty years in such a compelling fashion that many readers were convinced that his theses were either true or highly plausible. Leigh was born in the United States but spent most of his adult life in England, his father's homeland. There he accumulated a vast knowledge of material surrounding the periphery of Christian history. Holy Blood was his first book with writing partner Michael Baigent and filmmaker Henry Lincoln. The authors set forth a theory that Jesus Christ married Mary Magdalene and fathered a child, who founded the ancient Merovingian dynasty of what is now France, and whose descendants survive today. Serious historians and religious academics were infuriated at the scholarly tone of this volume, which was so full of realistic detail that many readers cast skepticism aside. The scholarly outrage did not deter Leigh, however, and he continued (with Baigent and occasionally with Lincoln) to offer historical theses that ranged from "what if" to "why not" and came dangerously close, his critics said, to "it is." Leigh's other books on similar themes include The Temple and the Lodge (1989), an exploration of connections between the Knights Templar and the Freemasons, The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception (1991), and The Inquisition (1999). All of these efforts nudged Leigh ever farther from his original goal to be a fiction writer. Only shortly before his death was he able at last to self-publish the semi-autobiographical novel Grey Magic (2007).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Los Angeles Times, December 1, 2007, p. B8.

New York Times, December 1, 2007, p. B10.

Times (London, England), November 30, 2007, p. 74.