The Content Reader

"Langdon’s Mickey Mouse wristwatch read almost seven-thirty when he emerged from the jaguar limousine onto Inner Temple Lane with Sophie and Teabing. The threesome wound through a maze of buildings to a small courtyard outside the Temple Church. The roughhewn stone shimmered in the rain, and doves cooed in the architecture overhead.  London’s ancient Temple Church was constructed entirely of Caen stone. A dramatic, circular edifice with a daunting facade, a central turret and a protruding nave off one side, the church looked more lika a military stronghold than a place of worship. Consecrated on the tenth of February in 1185 by Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, the Temple Church survived eight centuries of political turmoil, the Great Fire of London, and the First World War, only to be heavily damaged by Luftwaffe incendiary bombs in 1940. After the war, it was restored to its original, stark grandeur. The simplicity of the circle, Langdon thought, admiring the building for...