The Damned are an English punk rock band formed in London in 1976 by lead vocalist Dave Vanian, guitarist Brian James, bassist Captain Sensible and drummer Rat Scabies. They were the first punk band from the United Kingdom to release a single, "New Rose" (1976), release a studio album, Damned Damned Damned (1977) and tour the United States. Nine of the band's singles charted on the UK Singles Chart Top 40.
Pierre Plantard de Saint-Clair was a French technical artist, best known for being the principal fabricator of the Priory of Sion hoax, by which he claimed from the 1960s onwards that he was a male-line Merovingian descendant of Dagobert II and the "Great Monarch" prophesied by Nostradamus. Today in France, he is commonly regarded as a con artist.
François-Bérenger Saunière was a French Catholic priest in the village of Rennes-le-Château, in the Aude region. He was a central figure in the conspiracy theories surrounding the village, which form the basis of several documentaries and books such as the 1982 Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln. Elements of these theories were later used by Dan Brown in his best-selling 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code, in which the fictional character Jacques Saunière is named after the priest.
Philippe Louis Henri Marie de Chérisey, 9th marquess de Chérisey was a French writer, radio humorist, surrealist and supporting actor.
Christopher John Millar, known by his stage name Rat Scabies, is a musician best known as the drummer for English punk rock band the Damned.
The Black Album is the fourth studio album by English punk rock band the Damned, and the first to feature Paul Gray on bass guitar. It was released on 3 November 1980 by Chiswick as a double album, with "Curtain Call" filling the whole of side 3, and a selection of live tracks recorded at Shepperton Studios at a special concert for Damned fan club members on side 4. The song "13th Floor Vendetta" paid tribute to the film The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971), opening with the lyrics "...the organ plays to midnight on Maldine Square tonight".
Phantasmagoria is the sixth album by U.K. punk rock band the Damned, released by MCA in July 1985. Special editions were available on white vinyl or picture disc; some versions included a free 12-inch of their No. 3 hit "Eloise". It is the first album by the band without original member Captain Sensible, and was a style shift to gothic rock compared to the band's punk sound of its early and later career.
Géraud-Marie de Sède, baron de Liéoux was a French author, writing under the nom-de-plume of Gérard de Sède, and a member of various surrealist organizations. He was born into an aristocratic family from Comminges, the son of Marcel Alfred Gustave de Sède, baron de Liéoux and Aimée de Sède de Liéoux 's first cousins, once removed. De Sède's father was the senior editor of the Catholic newspaper Le Courrier du Pas-de-Calais owned by the De Sède family.
Christopher Dawes is a British journalist and author. He works as a music journalist using the pseudonym Push.
The Jesus bloodline refers to the proposition that a lineal sequence of the historical Jesus has persisted, possibly to the present time. The claims frequently describe Jesus as having married, often to Mary Magdalene, and as having descendants living in Europe, especially France but also the UK. Differing and contradictory Jesus progeny scenarios, as well as more limited claims that Jesus married and had children, have been proposed in numerous modern books. Some such claims have suggested that Jesus survived the crucifixion and went to another location such as France, India or Japan.
The Dossiers Secrets d'Henri Lobineau, supposedly compiled by Philippe Toscan du Plantier, is a 27-page document which was deposited in the Bibliothèque nationale de France on 27 April 1967. The document purports to represent a part of the history of the Priory of Sion, and is widely considered to be a forgery created by Pierre Plantard and Philippe de Chérisey. Thirteen of the 27 pages of the document are taken from another document attributed to "Henri Lobineau" dating from 1964, also thought to have been authored by Plantard, called Généalogie des Rois Mérovingiens. This document contains genealogy diagrams which apparently show Plantard to be a descendant of the Merovingian king Dagobert II.
Bloodline is a 2008 documentary film by Bruce Burgess and Rene Barnett, a filmmaker with an interest in paranormal claims, focused on the "Jesus bloodline" hypothesis and other elements of the 1982 book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.
The Prieuré de Sion, translated as Priory of Sion, was a fraternal organisation founded and dissolved in France in 1956 by Pierre Plantard in his failed attempt to create a prestigious neo-chivalric order. In the 1960s, Plantard began claiming that his self-styled order was the latest front for a secret society founded by crusading knight Godfrey of Bouillon, on Mount Zion in the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1099, under the guise of the historical monastic order of the Abbey of Our Lady of Mount Zion. As a framework for his grandiose assertion of being both the Great Monarch prophesied by Nostradamus and a Merovingian pretender, Plantard further claimed the Priory of Sion was engaged in a centuries-long benevolent conspiracy to install a secret bloodline of the Merovingian dynasty on the thrones of France and the rest of Europe. To Plantard's surprise, all of his claims were fused with the notion of a Jesus bloodline and popularised by the authors of the 1982 speculative nonfiction book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, whose conclusions would later be borrowed by Dan Brown for his 2003 mystery thriller novel The Da Vinci Code.
Chris Constantinou is an English musician, best known as the bass guitarist and backing vocalist for Adam Ant.
Henry Soskin, better known as Henry Lincoln, was a British author, television presenter, scriptwriter, and actor. He co-wrote three Doctor Who multi-part serials in the 1960s, and — starting in the 1970s — inspired three Chronicle BBC Two documentaries on the alleged mysteries surrounding the French village of Rennes-le-Château — and, from the 1980s, co-authored and authored a series of books of which The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail was the most popular, becoming the inspiration for Dan Brown's 2003 best-selling novel, The Da Vinci Code. He was the last living person to have written for Doctor Who in the 1960s.
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail is a book by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln.
Rennes-le-Château is a commune approximately 5 km south of Couiza, in the Aude department in the Occitanie region in Southern France.
The Mutants is a punk rock supergroup based around Chris Constantinou, Rat Scabies and Paul Frazer, hosting an all-star cast of guest musicians.
Professor and the Madman is a four-piece American rock band featuring co-frontmen/songwriters Alfie Agnew and Sean Elliott, drummer Rat Scabies and bassist Paul Gray. Agnew had been in the punk bands Adolescents and D.I. and Elliott had played guitar in D.I. Scabies and Gray were the rhythm section of The Damned, and they appeared together on a pair of The Damned's studio albums: The Black Album (1980) and Strawberries (1982). Gray also played in Eddie and the Hot Rods and UFO.
