Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Far less than you might think
OK you've piqued my interest, gonna try and find a copy.
Far less than you might think
HBHG is great, one of my fave literary frauds. Think its fair to say they really believed it, or rather, that it was true, therefore making a few things up was justified.
Dan Brown actually plays an important part in the history of trolling – but as the victim, rather than perpetrator, of an exquisitely realized hoax [...] Brown was suckered hook, line and sinker, basing his best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code on the ludicrous claims of the older book and even going so far as to include a note in the preface asserting the historical (and, presumably, present-day) reality of the Priory. [...] Hilariously, two of the three authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail unsuccessfully sued Brown’s publisher for plagiarism in 2005, two years after the publication of The Da Vinci Code, which had proven an instant bestseller. The court then rather wonderfully bullshitted the bullshitters and ruled that, since the plaintiffs’ book was ostensibly a work of historical ‘fact’, Brown was justified in using it for ‘research’ for his novel. The free publicity of the trial apparently significantly boosted sales of the older cranks’ book, which may have brought them some comfort after they were landed with legal fees in the region of £3,000,000.
Gavin Menzies' 1421 is another sincere lie.
I came close to throwing it into the fire when he cited hapless AI 'expert' kevin warwick as an authority on anything, but a few pages later it had redeemed itself. it's going to be a rocky road though, that's clear.