Da Vinci trial loser Richard Leigh dies

One of the co-authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, who failed in a long and expensive case at the High Court last year to sue Da Vince Code writer Dan Brown for plagiarism, has died suddenly in London. Richard Leigh, an eccentric figure on the London literary scene with his Zapata moustache, leather jacket and never without a cigarette, was 64.

The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail was a hugely controversial bestseller when it was published in 1982. The only advantage of the high-profile court case was that the publicity helped return the book to the bestseller list, selling 7,000 copies a week. The royalties helped Leigh and co-author Michael Baigent a little way towards paying off their estimated £2m legal bill. (The book's third co-author, Henry Lincoln, did not pursue the plagiarism case.)

The court case was particularly stressful for Baigent and Leigh because their own publishers, Random House, had gone on to publish The Da Vinci Code.

HBHG made a huge impact on publication. The three writers claimed to have uncovered a centuries-long conspiracy to conceal a bloodline descended from Jesus of Nazareth who, they believed, never died on the cross but traveled to France with Mary Magdalene, where they had at least one child. The bloodline was kept secret over the ages by the Knights Templar and, more recently, by a secret society known as the Priory of Sion.

Although Dan Brown was cleared of plagiarism, Judge Peter Smith accepted that ten out of 15 central themes of HBHG were used in The Da Vinci Code. "In the main, the majority of the central themes were drawn from HBHG," he said.

Leigh and Baigent continued to collaborate on books, but Leigh always saw himself as a writer of fiction first. His final novel, Grey Magic, published this year, was semi-autobiographical, the narrator, like Leigh himself, being born in the US and moving to England in his thirties.