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Westminster Abbey was right to reject Hollywood's 30 pieces of silver

The Da Vinci Code has sold more than 20 million copies across the world. So now it is to be a film. This week the film-makers are in Lincoln (Britain). They would have preferred to be in Westminster Abbey because it is there (something to do with the tomb of Sir Isaac Newton) that the trail in the book leads. But the Abbey authorities refused, saying "…we cannot commend or endorse the contentious and wayward religious and historic suggestions made in the book".

Luckily for the film-makers, the Dean of Lincoln, the Very Reverend Alec Knight, is not so fussy. He agrees that the book is "a load of old tosh". But as soon as the team offered £100,000 to the cathedral if he would let them film, he gave in. "It will bring Lincoln and Lincolnshire more into focus," he says, "It is a huge opportunity in secular terms." A solitary nun mounted a prayer vigil at the cathedral doors in protest, but the Very Reverend was nothing daunted, happy in his Anglican illusion that £100,000 is a lot of money to extract from Hollywood.

Read entire article at Independent (UK)