The blockbuster Bayeux Tapestry exhibition at the British Museum opening this month (10 September-11 July 2027) has been heralded as a must-see event. In July, ticket sales for the exhibition generated over £2.5m on the first day, marking the “single biggest day of ticket sales in [the British Museum’s] history”, according to a museum statement.
But if bagging a ticket has proved impossible, it is worth seeking out the numerous publications on the Medieval masterpiece, which depicts the 1066 Norman invasion and the Battle of Hastings that ended in the defeat of Harold II of England by William, duke of Normandy.
‘Every reader, every budget’
The British Museum Press is launching a whopping eight new publications related to the show. “We’re producing a suite of books that celebrate the tapestry for every reader, at every budget,” says Claudia Bloch, the head of publishing at the British Museum, “from the ABC board book for our youngest readers to the deluxe collectors’ edition.”
My Bayeux ABC: A Bayeux Tapestry Alphabet Book, one of four children’s books published by Nosy Crow and the British Museum (£6.99), introduces young children to the letters of the alphabet through the imagery of the Bayeux Tapestry. Meanwhile, older children can savour The Bayeux Tapestry: The Graphic Novel (£9.99), which has been “carefully researched with museum experts to ensure historical accuracy while keeping the tone light, engaging and entertaining”.
At the other end of the scale, the £200 cased, hardback Collectors’ Edition comprises two sections: the first is a Swiss-bound volume featuring a full-colour reproduction while the second section is a separate curatorial commentary designed to be read alongside the reproduction. Crucially, the reproduction is accompanied by a transliteration and English translation of the original Latin inscriptions (the Medieval captions embroidered along the top of the 58 pictorial scenes).
The Collectors’ Edition is edited by a team of curators from the museum, including Sue Brunning, the curator of the early Medieval European collection, and Lloyd de Beer, the curator of the European Modern collection. The same team is also responsible for the main exhibition guide in hardback (£45), The Bayeux Tapestry, that presents the latest research into the tapestry across five chapters such as Patronage and Display and The Historical Context.
The latter chapter reveals important historical nuggets, beginning: “The Bayeux Tapestry was likely made in the 1070s and probably after 1072, so after the conquest of the English Kingdom had effectively been completed. This means that the vast majority of the victors and the vanquished, whatever their beliefs and opinions, were having to work out how to live together peacefully and to shape and build new lives and societies.”
For those who just cannot live without the tapestry, the Fold-Out Edition (£15) features a full-colour, 12m-long concertina reproduction, which measures almost 70m in length.
Reissuing old classics
It is also worth taking stock of existing titles that need to be reappraised in the wake of the tapestry arriving in the UK. Many Medieval scholars rate highly The Bayeux Tapestry: The Life Story of a Masterpiece (Chatto & Windus, 2006) by the late UK art historian Carola Hicks, which, according to Angela Thirlwell in The Guardian “brought fresh insights to this Medieval strip cartoon and instrument of political propaganda”.Thirlwell added: “Most groundbreaking was [Hicks’s] investigation of the afterlife of the Bayeux Tapestry: its rediscovery by 18th-century antiquarians, its survival though the French revolution, its reinvention by the pre-Raphaelites, its skewed interpretation by over-reachers from Napoleon to Heinrich Himmler.”
Meanwhile, The Story of the Bayeux Tapestry: Unravelling the Norman Conquest by David Musgrove and Michael Lewis (Thames & Hudson, 2021), the lead curator of the British Museum exhibition, has been revised and expanded, with some interesting nuggets about the institutions competing to show the work in the UK, including the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), Westminster Cathedral and the towns of Hastings and Battle.
“The V&A had signed a memorandum with the city of Bayeux in 2022 to share research and expertise around the tapestry… the V&A has a long history with the tapestry because its predecessor institution, the South Kensington museum, had commissioned the photographer Joseph Cundall to create a photographic record of the embroidery in 1872,” say the authors. According to Tristram Hunt, the V&A director, the museum would have been able to hold the exhibition in its central London home, although Hunt did also have a vision to work with organisations in Hastings and Battle to possibly find a suitable venue there.
Another influential publication is Andrew Bridgeford’s 1066: The Hidden History of the Bayeux Tapestry (Harper Collins, 2004), which is due to be reissued with a new introduction and postscript. Bridgeford focuses on the tapestry’s English origin, identifying “the artist’s brilliant strategy of ‘dual narrative’ whereby two completely incompatible accounts of Harold’s journey and oath are presented by the same pictures and same terse words at once, evidently for different groups of viewers, but with each story leading to the same conclusion: the outcome at Hastings was God’s judgment on Harold.”
