The Bayeux Tapestry has returned to England for the first time in nearly a thousand years. His Majesty King Charles III and President Emmanuel Macron inspected it at the British Museum on September 2, ahead of the exhibition opening to the public on September 10. It is an extraordinary homecoming, not least because the famous “French” tapestry was probably made in England in the first place.
It is, in fact, not actually a tapestry. It is an embroidery, nearly 70 metres long, depicting the events leading up to the Norman Conquest and culminating in the Battle of Hastings in 1066. It was probably commissioned by Odo, Bishop of Bayeux and half-brother of William the Conqueror, and most scholars now think it was worked by English embroiderers, perhaps in Canterbury. All of this will be familiar enough to anyone who remembers the schoolroom version of 1066: Edward the Confessor dies, Harold takes the throne, William crosses the Channel, an arrow finds its way towards Harold’s eye and England is never quite the same again.
