Edinburgh Evening News

Ian Robertson has one of Scotland's most important historical and priceless artefacts hanging in his house. But he doesn't want to talk about that. It's the blue blanket, an ancient symbol of Edinburgh, said to date back to the time of the Crusades and raised whenever the city's tradesmen were called upon to defend the king. Yeah, yeah, he says, but take a look at this carving . . . Ian is darting around Rosslyn Chapel, pointing out the areas where Dan Brown got it all wrong in his best-selling book The Da Vinci Code. For he and another historian, Mark Oxbrow, have just published Rosslyn and The Grail, their take on the Holy Grail myth which surrounds the Midlothian chapel and which has spawned a major tourism industry and a Hollywood blockbuster starring Tom Hanks.