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The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail
- Narrated by: Simon Prebble
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Abridged Audiobook
- Categories: History, World
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Summary
Critic reviews
"Like Chariots of the Gods?...the plot has all the elements of an international thriller." ( Newsweek)
More from the same
What listeners say about The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Vikki
- 06-06-06
A well researched book.
I listened to this book having had a basic understanding of most of the groups and theories involved, The Knights Templar, The Bible, The Priory of Scion etc, and I think this is well explained and well researched description of the connections that could be made between them. However I did feel they presented certain theories as fact without giving sufficient explanation and leaned heavily on assumptions, creating some very tenuous links. I think if you listen to this with a balanced and perhaps slightly skeptical ear you will find it very entertaining.
12 people found this helpful
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Overall
- A Genealogist
- 07-01-07
Entertaining Nonsense
The premise behind this tale is that Mary Magdalen bore Jesus a child, the descendents of which joined the ancient Merovingian families of France and survive to the present day.
The evidence given for this is based on parchments allegedly discovered by Berenger Sauniere in Rennes Le Chateau in the 19th Century combined with documents released by an organisation called the Priory or Sion through the 1950s and 1960s.
There are a lot of holes in the evidence and an astonishing number of assumptions made. Also I ask whether the members of the so called Priory of Sion in its modern form have some sort of motive in perpetrating a hoax that took in the authors.
Nevertheless, this is an entertaining and well narrated audiobook based around an intriguing but ultimately unproven hypothesis.
10 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Paul
- 15-07-08
True or Not
Basically lets look at what we are saying is true or not true here. What you read or listen to in the pages of this or the after the event, concocted for the good of the church load of rubbish that is written in the bible.
The thing for me is that some place all their faith in a book we know was put together giving a slant in favour of the church in the 5th centuary.
My thoughts expressed here may lead some to think I am not a spiritual person but I believe Jesus survived the cruxifiction and lived on for many years.
Try looking at him as a mortal, you may get closer to him that way
7 people found this helpful
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- mr m a holloway
- 19-01-19
Twisting the thought process
Enjoyed the audio of this book immensely although factual dates did distract sometimes from what was being said. Having said that it was a great listen and recommend it.
2 people found this helpful
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- David
- 24-06-15
Good research, interesting topics, dragged on a bit
Although everyone will believe what they want, the book has put some good research together and some different twists to suggest that Priory de Sion hold some explosive information. However, if it was that explosive why hasn't it been revealed. I enjoyed the book, but was lost from time to time on where it was going.
2 people found this helpful
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- Smithy
- 20-01-19
interesting but a hard read
interesting but a hard read. lots of names and dates to remember mostly French.
despite that is tantalizingly mysterious. hypothesis is very plausible. The authors have clearly researched thoroughly. brush up on your French geneology though.
1 person found this helpful
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- Ian
- 26-11-18
interesting reading
I really enjoyed the book and found it engaging to listen to.
I would recommend this if you are interested in an alternative way of thinking about history.
1 person found this helpful
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- Henry
- 09-10-18
A very thought provoking listen
Fantastic book with lots of facts, hard at times due to jumping from one year to another but overall a brilliant book. Thought provoking and challenging the way I view past events that have impacted the present day.
1 person found this helpful
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- captain gadget
- 02-08-18
a great historical subject
this is one of the great theories and is also plausible .I've read it 3 times and listened 4 and i glean a bit more information every time
1 person found this helpful
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- Dave
- 01-05-22
Blah blah blah
A lot of supposition based on ifs and buts and maybes. Wild guesses supported by nothing, entertaining listen but fiction not facts
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- Ian C Robertson
- 09-06-15
Entertaining and Still Controversial
I first read this book in the late 80's and I remembering recognising it in the plot of the Da Vinci Code many years later. Of course, the authors famously sued Dan Brown's publishers for breach of copyright, but a Court found there was no infringement (Baigent & Ors v Random House). It was controversial then and it remains so now.
I do not intend to set out the thesis here. It unfolds like a good thriller (in some ways in a more interesting manner than the devices adopted in the Da Vinci Code). However, as most will know, the tale concerns the alleged bloodline of the Magdalene and Jesus of Nazareth (or Galilee), the Knights Templar, the Priory of Sion and a traipse between Britain and the Middle East guided by Leonardo, Isaac Newton, Victor Hugo and other notables. Fun, exciting stuff, indeed.
The text is written like a great adventure (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade comes to mind) and is punctuated with a lot of dramatic rhetorical questions and leaps of logic (on the basis that the detail is too complex to set out in full, but "Trust me, I'm an historian!) Thoroughly entertaining, if a bit short on chain of proof (exacerbated by the abridgement of this production that does not include the the Introductions (either edition), the Afterword and Appendices).
All of this is made more the worthwhile by the excellent narrative by Simon Prebble (one of my favourites).
There's no need to take this too seriously, trying to follow the convolution in the tale on Wiki as you might with another doco. Just take it in, have the odd giggle and grin and enjoy the drama.
3 people found this helpful
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Overall

- Caroline
- 24-05-07
changing history as we believe it to be
Very thorough, am enjoying back and listening a second time to absorb all the information. I recommend this book for those interested in the "Jesus as man, not Messiah" idea. Great for French history as well.
2 people found this helpful
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- Anniebligh
- 20-02-18
Abridged and still good
Read this book decades ago and loaned it to many people, and got it back too.
Not everyone cares what has happened in the last 2000 years, nor what happens in the future.
This is really a book for the curious, people who would like to understand better about a lot of things. Tell some people Jesus had a wife and kids and heck no he did not get nailed to a cross and well it is just one of those conspiracy stories like the Earth is round.
Picket and Prince were probably investigating 'The Templar Revelation' at about the same time Michael Baigent , Richard Leigh , Henry Lincoln were investigating 'Holy Blood..'. In this abridged form a lot of the actual researching is not there, and the main thrust, the big story is there. Well I found it really exciting back then lifetimes ago and still do.. How many people were brutally murdered because they thought and said.."Hang on a sec." Joseph was not Jesus' dad?" or worse. And wars waged because some idiots wanted to read the Good Book themselves.
Simon Prebble does a good job reading this.
Even though this is abridged, it is a good listen for interesting people and if you really want to read it all, go on buy the hard copy.
If nothing else it is a story about the hoodwinking of the west, for a few thousand years.