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Da Vinci da-bunked

For his expression alone, Chris Howse should be added to every Rolodex as resident debunker.

"One small detail undermines any remaining confidence in Dan Brown's scholarship. I was
reminded of it by Craig Brown's exposure of Gore Vidal.

"Disillusion first set in," Craig wrote, "when I heard him on the BBC speaking with apparent authority about the British secret services.

It was only when he began talking about 'M-Fifteen' and 'M-Sixteen' that I realised that, far from knowing all about MI5 and MI6, Gore Vidal didn't even know how to pronounce them."

In just this way, Dan Brown has all his art experts talking about "Da Vinci" as if it were an ordinary surname like Brown. Real art historians call him Leonardo."