Category Archives: Bayeux tapestry

Bayeux tapestry loan symbolises ‘entente amicale’ between France and UK, says King Charles

Posted on by

Monarch tells Emmanuel Macron at the British Museum in London that the two nations will share a future ‘woven together’ by history and shared values

The loan of the Bayeux tapestry was “the best possible symbol” of the “entente amicale” between France and the UK, King Charles said, as he visited the famous embroidered masterpiece at the British Museum in London.

Though the tapestry recounts a conflict, “here it is today, nearly 1,000 years later, as a precious symbol of trust, at a time when trust seems sadly to be in short supply between nations,” he said.

Continue reading...

Missed out on tickets to see the Bayeux tapestry in London? A £1,000 hotel stay will get you in

Posted on by

British Museum’s £33 tickets sold out in a day but some slots have been reserved for guests at five-star One Aldwych

Those hoping to snare a glimpse of the Bayeux tapestry when it comes to the British Museum this September faced nine-hour online queues, with the £33 tickets sold out within a day.

But the monied guests of a five-star hotel in Covent Garden have not had to go to such arduous lengths to get a view of the nearly 1,000-year-old depiction of William the Conqueror’s victory over King Harold II of England at Hastings in 1066.

Continue reading...

Test runs and a shock-absorbing cage: how Bayeux tapestry was moved to UK

Posted on by

Medieval artwork safely delivered to British Museum before display from September in carefully controlled conditions

The Bayeux tapestry has survived myriad perils, from cathedral fires to its potential destruction for use as wagon covers. Now, with the embroidery about to be displayed in a blockbuster London exhibition, experts must contend with a host of more insidious dangers.

The arrival of the tapestry at the British Museum in the small hours of Friday morning was a historic moment – albeit less dramatic than the landing of William the Conqueror it portrays.

Continue reading...

‘Of course we will give it back’: Bayeux tapestry set for secret journey across Channel

Posted on by

Operation will use specially built container to protect fragile 11th-century embroidery

As the Bayeux tapestry wends its way across the Channel in a top secret operation there will be no jolts, no bumps, no shakes or vibrations – unlike the voyage of William the Conqueror whose 1066 victory at Hastings the artefact recounts.

“Nothing has been left to chance,” Catherine Pégard, the French minister of culture, told a gathering to mark the historic loan, which will be physically achieved with the tapestry, which is really an embroidery, transported in a specially constructed cradle within a container, the minister said.

Continue reading...

Historians dispute Bayeux tapestry penis tally after lengthy debate

Posted on by

Two Bayeux scholars at loggerheads over whether dangling shape depicts dagger or the embroidery’s 94th phallus

In a historical spat that could be subtitled “1066 with knobs on”, two medieval experts are engaged in a battle over how many male genitalia are embroidered into the Bayeux tapestry.

The Oxford professor George Garnett drew worldwide interest six years ago when he announced he had totted up 93 penises stitched into the embroidered account of the Norman conquest of England.

Continue reading...