The Bayeux Tapestry: Woven by the Victors

The Bayeux Tapestry may be back in England, but it is a Norman artwork. For Anglo-Saxon voices, we need to look elsewhere. This is shaping up to be the year of the Bayeux Tapestry. From September this monumental work of medieval art will be on display at the British Museum, and its return to England for the first time in almost 1,000 years has been greeted with immense enthusiasm. It has been hailed as a homecoming: although we do not know for sure where the tapestry was created, it is now generally accepted that it was made in Canterbury, a decade or so after the Battle of Hastings. Anglo-Saxon manuscripts from Canterbury’s monasteries display parallels with the tapestry’s distinctive style, and the most likely workers were English women, who were known for the fine quality of their embroidery. If English hands made it, though, an English perspective is largely silent in the tapestry itself, that artful but deeply partisan tribute to the Norman victory.