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Henry Lincoln (born 1930) is the most popular pseudonym of Henry Soskin, an English writer and actor. He cowrote several Doctor Who multi-part serials in the 1960s, and—starting in the 1970s—created a series of books and BBC Two documentaries on the mystery of Rennes-le-Château. He is best-known for being one of the coauthors of the controversial 1982 pseudohistory bestseller The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, promoting the hypothesis that the true nature of the quest for the holy grail was that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had actually had a child together, and founded a bloodline which later married into a French royal dynasty, the Merovingians, and was all tied together by a society known as the Priory of Sion. This series of hypotheses was later used as a basis for Dan Brown's international bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code. Lincoln currently lives in the Cotswolds of England, and also gives tours of Rennes-le-Château.
Early career Lincoln was born in London in 1930, and studied acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Under his original name of Henry Soskin, he appeared in 1960s television series such as The Avengers and The Champions, and then moved on to writing. He was the co-writer, with Mervyn Haisman, of three Doctor Who stories starring Patrick Troughton: The Abominable Snowmen, The Web of Fear and The Dominators. Rennes-le-Château
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail In the 1970s, while Lincoln was lecturing at a summer school, Lincoln met Richard Leigh, an American fiction writer. Leigh introduced him to Michael Baigent, a New Zealand photo-journalist who had been working on a project about the Knights Templar. The three discovered that they had a shared interest in the Knights Templar, and took their Jesus bloodline theory on the road during the 1970s in a series of lectures prior to the publication of Holy Blood. Then they collaborated on the 1982 book, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, which became a bestseller, and popularised the theory that Jesus had fathered a still extant and powerful bloodline (the true Holy Grail), ideas which were later used as the basis of Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code. In 2005, Baigent and Leigh launched a legal action against Brown on grounds of plagiarism. Brown was eventually cleared, in April 2006. Lincoln was not involved in these proceedings, reputedly because of illness, however in the Revealed documentary, The Man behind the Da Vinci Code, Lincoln revealed that he did not wish to take part in the proceedings because the ideas brought forth in Holy Blood were not even original themselves, and Brown's actions could only be described as, "a bit naughty". The first novel to use the theme of a Jesus bloodline was The Dreamer of the Vine in 1980, by Liz Greene (Richard Leigh's sister) – Liz Greene is not being sued for plagiarism. Militi Templi Scotia On November 8, 2003, Lincoln was given an Honorary Knighthood in the Militi Templi Scotia order, at Newbattle Abbey in Scotland, in recognition of his work in the fields of Sacred geometry and Templar history.* A description of the knighting ceremony can be found in Rat Scabies And The Holy Grail by Christopher Dawes, a gonzo-style book about the Rennes-le-Château mystery in which Lincoln appears as a central character. Works Note: Lincoln is sometimes credited as Henry Soskin or Norman Ashby | ||||||||||
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