Bayeux Tapestry

Yesterday

Charles Moore

Where have all the Normans gone?

Does Britain understand where Javier Milei’s move on the Falklands is heading? It is becoming clearer that, behind the nationalist bluster, he sees a real energy opportunity, and, from Argentina’s point of view, a threat. Milei argues that if drilling proceeded, as the Falklanders want, Britain would be able to seize offshore Argentine oil resources. This allows him to present the issue as one of national security on which his country needs to act. The British government line is low-key: the matter ‘is decided by the Falkland Islands people’ and the government ‘is absolutely supportive of the decision’. But is it aware of the degree of its responsibility?

Alex Burghart

The wonder of the Bayeux Tapestry

How the Froggies must be laughing. Such a gracious loan. So kind. Like England lending Henry V’s longbows to the Louvre – or sailing HMS Victory up the Seine. Well, let them titter. The Tapestry is home. Nothing else matters. Likely sewed in Canterbury in the 1070s, before being sent across the Channel, it has only ever left Bayeux twice before. In 1803, when Boney was contemplating a pop at the White Cliffs, he displayed it in Paris. (After Trafalgar, it was quietly returned to Normandy.) Then, as the Nazis were retreating from Operation Overlord, it was taken for safe keeping to the cellars of the Louvre and, in late 1944, only weeks after Paris’s liberation, placed on public view. Today’s minibreak from Bayeux comes in rather happier times.

Tuesday

Flora Watkins

Don’t bother with the Bayeux Tapestry

Forgive me for being smug, but I saw the Bayeux Tapestry in Bayeux two years ago. It cost about eight euros, there was hardly anyone in the museum and I also got to drink a lot of excellent cheap wine, eat moules à la Normande every night and visit several D-Day sites, for some mechanised slaughter, rather than the stitched 11th century variety. Give a Gallic shrug, open a wine in a can and plan a trip to Normandy next year We shrieked over the vast, blown-up photos of Charles de Gaulle ‘liberating’ Bayeux, about two weeks after British troops had liberated it, which had been put up ahead of the 80th anniversary.

Friday

Ettie Neil-Gallacher

How the Bayeux Tapestry broke the internet

Move over Kim Kardashian, with your cover shots for Paper magazine. Same for you, Taylor Swift, with tickets for your Eras tour. For there’s a new phenomenon breaking the internet – with sales appearing to rival the speed of Glastonbury – and it’s not so much viral as venerable.  When I made a note in my diary for 10 a.m. on 1 July to get tickets for the Bayeux Tapestry display at the British Museum, little did I imagine just how difficult it might be. Prompted by my younger daughter’s project on the Norman Conquest, and its commission by Bishop Odo, William the Conqueror’s half-brother, I promised her we’d go and see it in the autumn when it came to London – its first trip to these shores since it was taken to France late in the 11th century.