The Scotsman reports on the discovery of human remains beneath the central aisle at Rosslyn Chapel:

It could have been a plot twist from The Da Vinci Code when workers unearthed a pile of bones under heavy stone slabs.

No-one knew why the skeletons were there in the central aisle of the 15th-century Rosslyn Chapel, which according to legend is the last resting place of ancient knights and even older holy relics.

But archaeologists now believe the skeletons were placed there when the chapel was abandoned during the Reformation, in the 17th century, by local people who wanted to bury their relatives on consecrated ground. They lay under the stone for more than three centuries until the slabs were lifted two years ago.

Sorry, Dan, no Jesus or Mary Magdalene!

Seems like everyone's a bit 'Dan Brown-fatigued' - on top of very little news about the best-selling author, the only related news recently comes from Hollywood, where award-winning director Ron Howard has opted out of being behind the camera for the big screen adaptation of The Lost Symbol. Despite taking control of the first two films in the series, Howard will this time only be associated as a producer.

Last year we pointed out the 'amusing coincidence' that award-winning scriptwriter Steven Knight was penning the film adaptation of DB's The Lost Symbol. Now, however, The Hollywood Reporter carries news that Dan Brown himself has now taken over the job of writing the movie script:

Mega-selling mystery author Dan Brown has taken over writing duties on the film adaptation of The Lost Symbol.

Columbia Pictures is developing the film version of Brown's most recent novel, which was published in 2009 and sold more than a million copies in its first day on shelves. In it, Brown's regular protagonist, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, gets mixed up with the Freemasons in Washington, D.C.

...Oscar-nominated Eastern Promises scribe Steven Knight first took a run at the Symbol screenplay. Although Ron Howard and Brian Grazer's Imagine Entertainment is once again producing, Howard, who directed the first two Brown adaptations, has not committed to directing Symbol. Nor has star Tom Hanks officially come on board to reprise Langdon.

Seems a risky proposition...is this a sign that TLS is not going to be a big-budget affair, with Hollywood studios not willing to bet on DB's books anymore? That would seem unlikely, given the first two movies have made billions.

In DB's favour though, his books do read much like a movie, so perhaps it won't be too great a leap for him to make.

This week Dan Brown appeared on the Today show, chatting to Matt Lauer about the new illustrated edition of The Lost Symbol and various other topics. At one point Lauer asked him about his appearance at the Italian La Scala opera house, and wondered aloud if that would be in the next book. DB paused, and laughed awkwardly, before saying "Anybody that's seen La Scala knows it is an unbelievable piece of architecture, great amount of history." Very suggestive that this will play a part in the next Langdon novel.

Lauer then wondered whether the next book would take as long as The Lost Symbol did (5 years after DVC), to which DB replied "I have been informed...by my wife, that if this new novel takes as long as The Lost Symbol, my next media appearance will be on The Bachelor."

Here's the full interview:

Good to hear!

One of the Washington D.C. locations used by Dan Brown in The Lost Symbol was the enigmatic Kryptos sculpture at C.I.A. headquarters (actually at Langley, Virginia). Those who have watched this site over the years would know that DB had been planning on using Kryptos in his sequel to The Da Vinci Code since before he even wrote that book - it's a topic that interests him greatly.

Dan is sure then to be intrigued by the news that Kryptos designer James Sanborn has released a clue to help puzzle-solvers decipher the last remaining message hidden 'within' the sculpture, telling the New York Times that six letters from the remaining 97 letters that have yet to be solved — NYPVTT — are the 64th through 69th letters of the final 97 characters, and that they decipher to the word BERLIN:

It’s the first clue Sanborn has revealed in four years, after he corrected a typo in his sculpture in 2006 to keep crypto detectives from being derailed in their search for solutions.

Sanborn told Threat Level last week that he wanted to reveal a clue to mark the 20th anniversary of the sculpture’s dedication at CIA headquarters in 1990. He said it would be a “significant clue” and hinted that it would “globalize” the sculpture. Asked if this meant it would take the sculpture off CIA grounds and out of the United States, he conceded it would.

Code detectives were already at work trying to crack the rest of the solution Saturday afternoon following the new clue revelation. Members of a popular Kryptos Yahoo Group were brainstorming during a 90-minute conference call.

“The ‘Berlin’ clue makes a lot of sense, in historical context of the Berlin Wall coming down that year,” says code cracker Elonka Dunin, a game designer who moderates the Yahoo Group and maintains a comprehensive web site on Kryptos.

To keep up to date with any new discoveries, your best bet is to visit Elonka Dunin's Kryptos webpage. (For the trivia lovers out there, Dan Brown seems to have given an anagrammatic nod to Dunin in the naming of the character 'Nola Kaye' in The Lost Symbol).

Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol has now sold over 1.7 million copies in the UK in all editions, with the recent paperback release smashing the record for the most first-week sales. The sequel to Brown's smash hit The Da Vinci Code clocked up 141,156 paperback sales in the week after its release, beating the previous record by 16,000 copies.

The paperback edition of The Lost Symbol is due out on July 22nd in the UK (a mass market paperback will be released in the United States in October). Dan Brown's British publisher says that interest in the paperback is extremely high:

Transworld says it has the biggest paperback subscription in its 60-year history for Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol, out on 22nd July. The publisher also announced there will be more Brown to come for Christmas, with an illustrated version of the book and an enhanced e-book "in the pipeline" for November.

More than 750,000 copies of the new paperback have been subbed across the publisher's UK and international markets, with over 1,300 free-standing display units also shipped out. Publisher Bill Scott-Kerr said support from all retailers had been "stellar". He said: "Dan Brown started out here as a paperback phenomenon and The Lost Symbol is perfectly positioned to continue that momentum."

The Lost Symbol has done some pretty huge business in the UK, but doesn't seem to have had the media impact that The Da Vinci Code did. Not enough scandal and controversy no doubt - DB made those Freemasons far too nice...

In an ironic turn of events, Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol has topped The Bible as the most highlighted book of all time on Amazon's Kindle eReader:

Amazon has built a "Popular Highlights" section that showcases the book passages underlined by Kindle readers--a 21st Century twist on literary quotation. So far, that list has been dominated by The Shack by William P. Young, Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, and The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown.

Here is the most underlined passage from Brown's most higlighted title--underlined by 1,161 Kindle users: "Langdon came face-to-face with a bronze bust of Masonic luminary Albert Pike, along with the engraving of his most famous quote: WHAT WE HAVE DONE FOR OURSELVES ALONE DIES WITH US; WHAT WE HAVE DONE FOR OTHERS AND THE WORLD REMAINS AND IS IMMORTAL."

Does that make Albert Pike bigger than Jesus?

Okay, so it's not like Robert Langdon cracked a code and found the secret passageway into the Vatican Archives...but it's interesting to note the indirect influence that may apply here. So go easy on me for the headline.

After centuries of being kept under lock and key, the Vatican has started opening its Secret Archives to outsiders in a bid to dispel the myths and mystique created by works of fiction such as Dan Brown's Angels and Demons.

The archives, until now jealously guarded from prying eyes, provide one of the key settings in Brown's thriller, in which Harvard "symbologist" Robert Langdon, played in the 2009 film by Tom Hanks, races against time to stop a secret religious order, the Illuminati, from destroying Vatican City.

...They have been open to carefully vetted academic researchers for more than 100 years, but in the last few months the Vatican has granted tours to select groups of journalists and members of the public, allowing a glimpse into one of its inner most sanctums.

Note though that the 'secret' archives remain off-limits; so hardly the Vatican's dirty laundry laid out for all to see. Full story here.

The paperback edition of Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol will be released on October 19 of this year. The novel will be priced at $9.99 in the US market, with a print run of four million copies.