{"id":1143209,"date":"2026-08-11T17:35:23","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T17:35:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1143209\/"},"modified":"2026-08-11T17:35:23","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T17:35:23","slug":"why-britain-cant-get-enough-of-the-bayeux-tapestry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1143209\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Britain Can\u2019t Get Enough of the Bayeux Tapestry"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a month\u2019s time, people from all over the world will be queuing up in Central London to get a look at a 70-meter-long band of parchment-colored cloth. Along its length, this textile is hand-stitched with images rendered in woolen threads in terracotta, gold and blue.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The images on the fabric can at first appear clunky and cartoonish \u2013 like a Medieval comic book \u2013 but look closer and you will discover intricate depictions of\u00a0 political drama in kings\u2019 courts, the clash of military hardware and innocent civilians fleeing as their homes burn.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This is the Bayeux Tapestry, which tells the story of the Norman Conquest: how William, the Duke of Normandy, defeated Harold Godwinson, who had been crowned King of England earlier that year. When it goes on display at London\u2019s British Museum on Sept. 10, it will be the first time it has been seen in the U.K. in its nearly 1,000 year existence.<\/p>\n

Already, the British public is swarming to get a look. Some waited in an 80,000-person online queue for nine hours to secure the first tickets on sale in July, according to the British Museum. Before the first visitor has arrived, the exhibition has sold out until 2027.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But what explains its extraordinary \u2013 and impressively long-lasting \u2013 appeal?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Northeastern Global News spoke with Northeastern University scholars, who unpacked some of the reasons why crowds are still drawn to this narrative depiction of betrayal and conquest \u2013 an artifact that reveals dramatic political change, the birth of a new culture and a curiously modern story.\u00a0<\/p>\n

An invasion that changed England<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Norman Conquest is a unique event in medieval history,\u201d said Lars Kjaer, associate professor of history at Northeastern University London. In images and words, the tapestry displays William\u2019s claim to the English crown \u2013 depicting Godwinson, years earlier, pledging the throne to William \u2013 and the decisive Battle of Hastings in 1066, where Harold is killed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cEngland before 1066 was oriented towards the North Sea and Scandinavia\u201d and it had been a part of Danish and Norwegian empires a generation earlier, he noted. With Harold\u2019s death, the Normans violently overthrew an entire political system, replacing the ruling class with French landholders, explained Kjaer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That meant that England began to come into line with the nobility and cultural heritage of France and continental Europe, according to Kjaer, leading to rapid changes in architecture, laws, and culture, with French-influenced legends of King Arthur emerging as national myths, in place of the Norse-rooted myths of Beowulf.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In other words, \u201cThis is the single most important event in English history,\u201d Kjaer emphasized.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Enduring quality<\/p>\n

Kathleen Coyne Kelly, professor of English at Northeastern University, argues that the tapestry\u2019s appeal is threaded through its linen fabric. Despite its name, this textile is not a woven tapestry but an embroidery, stitched with dyed wool.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We do not know for sure where this textile was created but many scholars now believe that it was made by a group of women in Canterbury, southeast of London, in the decades after the conquest, then shipped to the Bayeux Cathedral in Normandy, France.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Over centuries it has been restored, altered, censored and appropriated by different groups seeking to claim and reinterpret its meaning, explained Kelly. For instance, a figure often believed to be Harold is depicted with an arrow through his eye, matching a description of his death by 12th-century historians. \u201cThat arrow through the eye was not in the original \u2013 it was embroidered in the 19th century,\u201d during a restoration process, she explained.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The tapestry\u2019s imagery has become so deeply embedded in popular culture that many people recognize it without realizing they do, said Kelly. It has appeared in films, cartoons and magazine covers, including a well-known cover illustration for the New Yorker<\/a> published in July 1944 commemorating the Allied armies D-Day invasion of Normandy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"CrewPhotos Courtesy of the British Museum<\/p>\n

\"APhotos Courtesy of the British Museum
\nThe Bayeux Tapestry has been painstakingly transported from its home in Northern France to London. Photos Courtesy of the British Museum<\/p>\n

The tapestry\u2019s sequences of images \u2013 which \u201cunspool like a film\u201d \u2013 can be likened to modern visual storytelling in comic books, graphic novels, cartoons and movies. Kelly is interested in how something that has \u201cweighty cultural meaning\u201d shows up in \u201cThe Simpsons,\u201d which began a 2008 episode \u201cE Pluribus Wiggum\u201d with a joke that depicted the family\u2019s conflict with their neighbors, the Flanders family, in images mimicking the Bayeux.\u00a0<\/p>\n

No simple story<\/p>\n

At the same time, Stephen Spencer, assistant professor in medieval history at Northeastern University London, said that the tapestry is far from the simple, propagandistic story that some have claimed. From the 1950s, scholars believed that it was commissioned by Odo, the bishop of Bayeux and half-brother to William, to celebrate the invasion of England. But the embroidery portrays Harold in a curiously \u201csympathetic light and lacks the hallmarks one would expect of pro-Norman propaganda.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

For example, the tapestry does not tell us emphatically that William was the legitimate heir, leaving open the possibility that Harold made his promise under duress.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHarold himself is not a cartoon villain. He comes across as quite a glorious figure in many ways,\u201d added Kjaer. The two are depicted as having once had a beautiful alliance, including in a \u201cbuddy movie sequence\u201d where they are united in battle \u2013 before ending in tragedy.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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An up-close picture of a medieval world<\/p>\n

The tapestry offers a rare, visual snapshot of medieval life, said Kjaer. Most surviving illustrations from this period come from monks who depict a spiritual world \u201cof God, of saints, of devils,\u201d he noted. But the Bayeux Tapestry shows an everyday world: \u201cIt lovingly renders these beautiful horses, these boats, the chain mail, the dress, the haircuts,\u201d he said, with mustachioed Anglo-Saxons battling Normans who sport half-shaved heads.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Textiles like this were very common in the Middle Ages, when they would have covered the stone walls of castles, but have largely disappeared \u2013 \u201ceaten by mice, burned, abandoned when they fell out of fashion,\u201d he said. The Bayeux Tapestry presents a rare record of a lost world, by people who \u201cknew what it looks like when armies charge one another [and] what battlefields look like after the victory,\u201d he said. It\u2019s also impressively large, so visitors \u201cfeel like you\u2019re right in the middle of it. That makes it a completely unique source from medieval history,\u201d Kjaer said. \u201cWe have nothing like this, nothing at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tantalizingly, it ends without a conclusion to the tale. The end of the tapestry is damaged but some historians believe it may have shown William\u2019s coronation at Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a month\u2019s time, people from all over the world will be queuing up in Central London to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1143210,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,393,6968,36,4884,257,37978,16,15],"class_list":["post-1143209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-london","tag-britain","tag-england","tag-exhibition","tag-france","tag-great-britain","tag-london","tag-northeastern-university-london","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1143209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1143209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1143209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1143210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1143209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1143209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1143209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}