Steven D. Greydanus Fact-Checks Dan Brown’s Angels & Demons

Lies, Damned Lies and Dan Brown: Fact-checking Angels & Demons:

…[Dan] Brown claims that his narrative use of works of art and architecture is “entirely factual”: “References to all works of art, tombs, tunnels, and architecture in Rome are entirely factual (as are their exact locations),” he writes in an author’s note in Angels & Demons, adding, somewhat ungrammatically, “The brotherhood of the Illuminati is also factual.” (Statements may be “factual” or not; an institution or entity may or may not be historical, or accurately depicted — and Brown’s Illuminati manifestly isn’t — but in any case it can’t be “factual.”)

For years, Catholics, non-Catholic Christians and non-Christians with a low threshold for rampant disinformation have labored to set the record straight on countless points muddied in the book and movie versions of Brown’s tales. Brown’s inaccuracies start with the very point on which he claims strictest reliability: works of art and architecture — and their “exact locations.”