The 900 year wait is over

What the arrival of the Bayeux Tapestry means for Britain, and the British Museum

Get ready. Get your ticket early. If you are a Member, remember to renew your card. You have to be prepared. There will be queues, and then some. I cannot think of such a landmark show in the capital since the British Museum showed the Treasures of Tutankhamun in 1972. The Bayeux Tapestry will be on display at the BM from September 2026 to June 2027. It will be the first time in 900 years that this canonical art work has been on British soil, and it will be a must-see.

Bishop Odo, William’s half-brother, rallying the Norman troops during the Battle of Hastings

Exhibiting the Bayeux Tapestry in the country where it was actually produced has long been a dream; it was first seriously mooted in 1953 for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, and then again in 1966, to mark the 900^th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings. The loan was again on the table in 2018, after a suggestion by Theresa May, but it took seven years for the dream to be realised.

Yesterday’s statement by President Macron confirming the loan is a triumph for the British Museum and its director Nicholas Cullinan. In a sense it was the obvious place to host such an awesome loan.

The Museum has the infrastructure to cope with hundreds of thousands of visitors, and it has the actual space to display it, too; its giant Sainsbury Gallery is long enough to show the fragile tapestry, effectively 70 metres of embroidered bleached linen, in one straight line.

How it will probably be displayed Kamil Zihnioglu/Associated Press

Naturally there were other contenders, not least the Tower of London, built by William I in 1066 after his invasion. Then there was Battle Abbey, on the site of the fight itself and of course the V&A which holds the national collection of applied arts and which already has an array of distinguished tapestries, not least the ones designed by Raphael.

But the BM has grabbed the valuable prize. A few loans will be made to France in respect of what it has got; the Lewis Chessmen, and the treasures from Sutton Hoo. Lovely pieces, but nowhere as famous, as storied and as celebrated as the Bayeux Tapestry. That comet! The writing! The chainmail! The horses on boats! The moment when Harold has the arrow in his eye!

The event that changed us forever

Its images are the stuff of every single primary school history lesson. 1066 and All That, first published in 1930. And any newspaper cartoonist seeking to make a point about us and the French (see below).

Peter Brookes, The Times

Even though it depicts a woeful British loss, this piece of embroidery, probably produced by women, has been metaphorically stitched into British consciousness. It depicts the moment when England changed forever; when the English had to learn to live under someone else’s rules, with someone else’s language and someone else’s customs. Out of the invasion, the complexity and wealth of modern English and modern England was forged. The moment justifies such a complex, long and detailed art work. One honours the other.

Its very presence today is almost miraculous. For seven hundred years, it was essentially forgotten about, packed away in a cedar chest (to dispel moths) in Bayeux Cathedral, and only taken out on special occasions. But in the mid-eighteenth century, French historians in Paris used a coloured drawing of the first eleven scenes to begin to decipher what it depicted. Gradually its meaning was realised.

For the French it became a particular signifier. In 1803, before he planned to cross the Channel and overwhelm the British, Napoleon commanded it be brought to Paris, where he apparently stood in front of it in an aim to exhort the Grande Armee. When the invasion was abandoned, he sent it back to Bayeux. Two hundred years later, the loan will stand as President Macron’s final Grand Projet, a gesture showing France to be generous and imaginative, as well as reminding the world of its power and history.

Of course the display will now underline a more modern position. Even a frail thing made of coloured threads can represent lasting truth. The Bayeux Tapestry is about Britain’s place and history in Europe. It is of course about the relationship between the UK and “that sweet enemy”, France, but it is also about our Norse ancestry, Our shared fate was stitched together 900 years ago. For all the rift from Europe that Brexit has achieved, the Bayeux Tapestry offers unshakeable evidence of our mutual closeness.

Guido Kühn

I have never seen the Tapestry. Of course anyone could pop over the Channel to see it in Bayeux, but think how delightfully simple it will be for people to access it in London, an international city with its transport links and connections. As the row about the location of the Parthenon Marbles rumbles on, do you not think the British Museum will be pointing to its undeniable strength as a suitable venue to shelter such canonical works?

Equally, the arrival of the Tapestry symbolises a fresh willingness to acknowledge the importance of lending art works to nations whose story they reveal. Andrew Saluti, associate professor of Museum Studies at Syracuse University said yesterday the loan represented a “monumental kind of collaborative effort in terms of sharing this cross-cultural legacy,” and suggested that the BM might be willing to “facilitate these kinds of loans so that objects that really define a culture can be seen by their own people.” In a delightful reversal of art history, could the temporary presence of the Gothic tapestry in its original home be a precursor of the classical Parthenon Marbles making a similar move?

Woodmansterne’s Hysterical Heritage greeting card

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