Dan Brown's Biography

Dan Brown, best-selling author of 'The Da Vinci Code', was born on June 22, 1964.

Dan Brown grew up in Exeter, New Hampshire and graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1982. He and his siblings donated $2.2 million to the Phillips Academy in 2004 to honour their father, who had taught there for 35 years.

Dan Brown moved to Los Angeles and pursued a career as a composer and musician without great success. He then studied art history in Seville.

In 1993, he returned to New Hampshire and a teaching job at his old school.

The following year Dan Brown became a full-time writer and published his first thriller, Digital Fortress, in 1998. He went on to write 'Angels and Demons' and 'Deception Point'.

'The Da Vinci Code' was published in March 2003 and sold 6,000 copies on the first day. The book is now reported to have has sold more than 70 million copies worldwide, but this figure keeps growing!

The Da Vinci Code is the fastest-selling adult novel ever.

In April 2006 London's High Court ruled that with The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown did not breach the copyright of a 1982 book, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, written by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh.

Dan Brown puts his writing career down to reading Sidney Sheldon's Doomsday Conspiracy in 1994, saying, "I finished the book and thought, 'Hey, I could do that'."

Dan Brown came 12th in the Forbes list of the most powerful celebrities 2005.

Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol, which once again featured Professor Robert Langdon, went on sale in the UK on 15 September 2009.

In 2010, The Lost Symbol sold more than 140,000 copies in its first week as a paperback, a weekly UK sales record for a novel.

In 2013, he published Inferno, his fourth Robert Langdon novel.

In 2017, he published his fifth Langdon novel, Origin.