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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. ==''The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail''== 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.〔''The Telegraph'', 'Richard Leigh Orbituary', 30 November 2007. Available online at (www.telegraph.co.uk ), retrieved (4 July 2012).〕 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''. The day after publication, the authors had a public clash on BBC television with the Bishop of Birmingham and Marina Warner. The book rapidly climbed the best-seller charts, and the authors published a sequel, ''The Messianic Legacy'', in 1986. The book has been described as "a work thoroughly debunked by scholars and critics alike".〔Elizabeth Sherr Sklar, Donald L. Hoffman (editors), ''King Arthur In Popular Culture'', page 214 (McFarland & Company, Inc., 2002). ISBN 0-7864-1257-7〕 Arthurian scholar Richard Barber has commented, "It would take a book as long as the original to refute and dissect ''The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail'' point by point: it is essentially a text which proceeds by innuendo, not by refutable scholarly debate".〔cited in Richard Barber, "The Search for Sources: The Case of the Grail", in Norris J. Lacy, editor, ''A History of Arthurian Scholarship'', page 34 (D. S. Brewer, 2006). ISBN 978-1-84384-069-5〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Richard Leigh (author)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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