Richard Leigh (author)
| Richard Leigh | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Richard Harris Leigh 16 August 1943 New Jersey |
| Died | 21 November 2007 (aged 64) London, England |
| Education | B.A. Tufts University M.S. University of Chicago Ph.D. State University of New York at Stony Brook. |
| Alma mater | Tufts University |
| Occupation | author |
| Known for | Co-author The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail |
| Relatives | Liz Greene (sister), an author and astrologer |
Richard Harris Leigh (16 August 1943 – 21 November 2007) was a novelist and short story writer born in New Jersey, United States to a British father and an American mother, who spent most of his life in the UK. Leigh earned a BA from Tufts University, a master's degree from the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
Leigh met his frequent co-author Michael Baigent while living in the United Kingdom in the 1970s. They subsequently struck a friendship with the writer and British television scriptwriter Henry Lincoln in 1975 and between them developed a conspiracy theory involving the Knights Templar and the alleged mystery of Rennes-le-Château, proposing the existence of a secret that Jesus had not died on the Cross, but had married Mary Magdalene and fathered descendants who continued to exert an influence on European history. This hypothesis was later put forward in their 1982 book, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail achieved enormous commercial success and has been described as "one of the most controversial books of the 1980s". It popularised the idea that the true object of the quest for the Holy Grail was to find secret descendants of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. This bloodline is stated to have later married into a Frankish royal dynasty, the Merovingians, and to be championed and protected by a secret society known as the Priory of Sion. These theories were later used as a basis for Dan Brown's international best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code.
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