The Bayeux Tapestry's secret code of tyranny and injustice

Summary

Episode Summary

Podcast: HistoryExtra
Episode: The Bayeux Tapestry's Secret Code of Tyranny and Injustice
Host: Dave Musgrove
Guest: Professor Gail Owen-Crocker
Date: July 23, 2026

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Episode Theme and Purpose

This episode of the HistoryExtra podcast dives into the hidden messages and complex creation processes behind the Bayeux Tapestry, prompted by the newly published book by Professor Gail Owen-Crocker, The Design of the Bayeux Tapestry. As the tapestry returns to England for a major British Museum exhibition, the discussion explores its artistic origins, the narrative decisions that shaped it, and compelling evidence of a subversive "code" critiquing Norman tyranny. The host and guest unravel fresh research into who designed and made the tapestry, its narrative manipulations, and new findings about its visual sources and social context.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Origins and Design Process (01:46–07:02)

• Borrowings from Manuscript Art:
  • Professor Owen-Crocker has identified fresh evidence that the Bayeux designer extensively borrowed imagery from Canterbury manuscript art, especially leveraging visual material and textual context from monastic libraries (03:09).
• Template-Based Drawing:
  • Contrary to the idea of a lone freehand artist, preliminary drawings were prepared using repeated templates, enabling consistency across the vast embroidery (06:00).
  • “A little arch might be the tiny tile on a roof, or it might be a horse's genitals … so if you're drawing that way rather than freehand, it's quite engineered.” — Professor Gail Owen-Crocker (05:45)
• Team Effort, Not a Single Artist:
  • The tapestry represents the work of teams: flax and wool producers, spinners, dyers, draftspeople, artists, and embroiderers (07:22).
  • The logistical challenge points toward a managed operation, possibly involving both monastic and secular workshops.

2. Commissioning and Narrative Choices (07:02–13:33)

• Production Logistics:
  • Nine separate linen panels were created, likely by different makers, necessitating careful coordination. Variations in dye lots and panel sizes were managed for visual consistency (07:22–11:22).
• Narrative Decisions:
  • The tapestry was constructed as a carefully shaped story of two 'heroes'—Harold and William—excluding many figures and events to push a deliberate narrative (11:43).
  • There is clear manipulation of historical facts, emphasizing perjury and retribution to fit the Norman justification for invasion.

3. Roles in the Making: Nuns or Not? (13:33–16:08)

• Who Did the Stitching?
  • While the detailed labor was done in several workshops, it's likely a mix of secular and religious labor—possibly even men, contrary to tradition. No direct evidence ties the work to nuns alone; English names of embroiderers belong to goldworkers, not those doing colorful wool embroidery (14:11).
• Cultural Influences:
  • Comparisons are drawn with later English and Scandinavian embroidery traditions, indicating the tapestry’s distinct style and unknown workshop structure.

4. Technical and Artistic Glitches (19:33–22:18)

• Joining the Panels:
  • The first two panels famously do not align perfectly at the top border, a mistake not repeated, suggesting this was the first join and that later work learned from it (19:54).
  • “It's only when they turn it round to the front and they see this—oops, yes. They never do it again.” — Professor Gail Owen-Crocker (19:54)

5. Hands and Contributions: Identifying Artists, Not Stitchers (22:18–23:13)

• While embroidery hands cannot be precisely identified, art historians detect different artists’ work—particularly in the borders and specific narrative sections—by variations in drawing style (22:31).

6. Underlying Narrative and Subversive Meanings (23:13–28:04)

• Legitimizing Conquest, or Critiquing Tyranny?
  • The tapestry frames Harold as a tragic, fallible hero, legitimizing William’s conquest—but Owen-Crocker argues for hidden criticism of Norman rule by examining the original contexts of borrowed manuscript images (24:01).
  • “If you look at what the text is saying around the drawings that they borrow, it's always talking about tyranny and injustice. So, yes, I think the designer was saying something subversive about the Normans, but I don't think any but a very few people who knew these manuscripts really well...would have known it.” — Professor Gail Owen-Crocker (24:01–26:26)
• English Designer in a Norman World:
  • The designer was likely a highly educated Englishman caught between English tradition and the new Anglo-Norman regime, subtly “paying lip service” while encoding critique (28:04).

7. The Patron and Intended Use (28:49–32:24)

• Odo of Bayeux as Patron:
  • Odo, William’s half-brother and both Bishop of Bayeux and Earl of Kent, is seen as the critical link; the tapestry may have originally hung in a Norman castle keep in England, at eye level, before later being displayed in Bayeux Cathedral (29:29, 31:08).
• Possible Purposes:
  • The tapestry’s design to fit a measured space supports the theory it was meant as a secular display, movable for royal or noble gatherings.

8. Legacy, Display, and Public Perception (32:34–36:21)

• Modern Exhibition:
  • As the tapestry goes on display in the British Museum, Owen-Crocker hopes for a renewed appreciation of 11th-century life, emphasizing its vibrancy, flaws, and humanity (33:00).
  • “When you see it in real life, as opposed to looking at a photograph of it, I think that three-dimensional aspect of it comes out because the wool stands out from the linen.” — Professor Gail Owen-Crocker (33:00)
• Bloodless Battles:
  • Despite its violent subject matter, the tapestry avoids direct depiction of blood, focusing instead on the contorted suffering of the fallen.

9. Favourite Scene (35:45–36:21)

• Opening Scene:
  • Owen-Crocker’s personal highlight is the opening, showcasing Edward’s wealth and England’s richness:
    • “It's telling us that England is rich and cultured. Just look at King Edward's clothes and his magnificent palace all around him. That's what they're fighting for and that's what the whole thing is about.” — Professor Gail Owen-Crocker (35:45)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Borrowing Imagery:

  • “What I'm interested in is the drawing behind the tapestry...how was it done?” — Professor Gail Owen-Crocker (04:00)

• On the Team Effort:

  • “Dismantle the concept of one tapestry artist and replace it with a team effort.” — Dave Musgrove (07:02)
  • “Somebody had to do all the logistics behind organizing that.” — Professor Gail Owen-Crocker (08:41)

• On Narrative Omissions:

  • “History is manipulated to suit this structured narrative of two proud and powerful men.” — Professor Gail Owen-Crocker (09:44)

• On Subversive Messages:

  • “I think the designer was saying something subversive about the Normans, but I don’t think any but a very few people who knew these manuscripts really well...would have known it.” — Professor Gail Owen-Crocker (24:01)

• On Seeing the Tapestry Today:

  • “It is very alive...the wool stands out from the linen...holes and patches and all. It is going to look quite ragged. It's not going to be ironed.” — Professor Gail Owen-Crocker (33:00)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Overview and Introduction — 01:46–02:51
• Origins and Design Analysis — 02:51–07:02
• Teamwork and Creation — 07:02–13:33
• Who Stitched It? Nuns or Not — 13:33–16:08
• Technical Panel Joins & Artists — 19:33–23:13
• Subversive Codes and Sources — 23:13–28:04
• Patronage and Display History — 28:49–32:24
• Exhibition and Modern Impacts — 32:34–36:21
• Favourite Scene — 35:45–36:21

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Conclusion

This episode reveals the Bayeux Tapestry as not only a grand artifact of medieval embroidery but a coded, collaborative project at the intersection of politics, art, and rebellion. Professor Owen-Crocker’s insights challenge the monolithic "masterpiece" myth, showing the tapestry as a product of many hands and hidden messages. The British Museum’s blockbuster exhibition promises to bring fresh life to this centuries-old narrative—warts and all—just as new research redefines its place in history.

Transcript

[Mike Suiter]

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[Mike Suiter]

Welcome to the History Extra podcast. The Bayer Tapestry has famously come home to England this year and from September 2026 until summer 20 going to be displayed in the British Museum in a blockbuster exhibition. To remind you, it's a monumental embroidery composed of nine linen panels on which has been stitched in woollen thread. The story of 1066 and the clash between England's Harold and Normandy's William, which culminates in the Battle of Hastings. It was probably made in England, even though it commemorates English defeat and Norman victory. The story is told in an arresting graphic novel style and there are borders above and below the action that may or may not relate to the narrative. There are many questions that need answering about how this huge work of art was created and Professor Gail Owen Crocker has tackled them in her new book, the Design of the Bayer Tapestry. She is in conversation in this episode with Dave Musgrove, who himself is co author of a book on the subject. The story of the Bayer tapestry.

[Dave Musgrove]

Today I am joined by Professor Gail Owen Crocker, one of the leading experts on the Bayer Tapestry. And, Gail, your book, the Design of the Bayer Tapestry, is your latest contribution to tapestry study. So what are you trying to do with this book, then? What's your sort of overarching thesis that you're trying to put across here?

[Professor Gail Owen Crocker]

One thing is it's well known that the Bayer designer borrows from manuscript art, and it's Canterbury art, the monastic libraries of St. Augustine's Abbey and Christchurch Cathedral, that was well known. But I've looked again at some of the manuscripts that still survive, and I found even more borrowings. And what I do that other people don't is I look at the context, I look at the text around those manuscript illustrations to see if I can see what the designer was thinking when he chose to borrow this. Because the way they learn things pre paper, pre multiple copies, was they learned by studying a manuscript at great length, and the illustrations were there to help them remember the text. So if our designer is thinking, I'll use that picture from that manuscript, that's because something in the text rang a bell for him related to what he was trying to illustrate in the tapestry drawings. So I have found much more of those. It's also well known that the tapestry artist uses Trajan's column in Rome and to a lesser extent, the column of Marcus Aurelius. And again, I found many more examples of the tapestry designer borrowing from Trajan's column. It's probably clear from what I'm saying that what I'm interested in is the drawing behind the tapestry. When people think of the tapestry, they think of it as an embroidery, and that's what it is, of course. But embroiderers have to work from outlines. They don't just spontaneously stitch. They have to have a drawing on the cloth and they follow the lines on the drawing. So it's not just the work of the embroiderers that I'm interested in, it's the work of the artists that lie behind those. The people who made the cartoon, as we call it, cartoon not meaning something funny, but meaning the sketch that's on the cloth. So I thought, how was it done? And working with Maggie Nene, who is an artist who's also illustrated my book, we discovered that the drawings used templates. You get the same shape over and over again, and they'll use the same shape for quite different things. A little arch might be the tiny tile on a roof, or it might be a horse's Genitals, it can be all sorts of different things. So if you're drawing that way rather than freehand, it's quite engineered, shall I say, it's draughtsmanship. So I realized the design must have been drawn out first, and then it must have been expanded to fit this very large piece of cloth. And that is done with the aid of templates by draftspersons. I don't know whether they were male or female. I don't know whether they were men working in a monastic scriptorium that made manuscripts or women working in a textile workshop that made hangings. But somebody was expert, had an expert team in enlarging and translating preliminary drawings into the cartoon to be embroidered on. And that's a step that has never been properly appreciated.

[Dave Musgrove]

Okay, there's lots to think about there. I just want to pick up on one phrase that I found quite arresting in your book. The idea that you want to dismantle the concept of one tapestry artist and replace it with a team effort. So you've kind of just sketched out a little bit about that. But tell me a bit more about that. What do you mean by that? Who's involved?

[Professor Gail Owen Crocker]

First of all, the cloth had to be made. You've got nine pieces of linen here, and they're all different. Analysis shows that they have slightly different thread counts. And the ones that have edging on them, the edging that was put onto the loom, are all different. So we've got at least five different pieces of cloth, I would say possibly nine different pieces of cloth. So those had to be commissioned. Somebody had to oversee that. They were similar. Although they were done by different hands, they passed for similar. Behind that there lies the growing of the flax, the cultivating of it, the turning it into linen thread and the spinning of it, and the rearing of sheep, the shearing or plucking of the sheep, and again, preparing the thread and the spinning of it, and in the case of the wool, the dyeing of it. At some point, all these materials have to be brought to the right place. The dye lots have to be similar enough to convince us that the colors are all the same throughout the tapestry. They're. They're probably not, because world based dyes only take their color on when they come out of the dye bath into the light. So depending on the time of day and the amount of sunlight you've got, those dye lots will be slightly different. And when they're analyzed, I'm sure we're going to find quite a lot of differences. But they're similar enough to convince us. So if somebody had to do. Do all the logic behind that, the logistics behind organizing that, then why make it so long and so narrow? I can only conclude that the first space it hung was a measured space, that it was intended for a specific place. Of course, textiles were essentially movable. That's the difference between your wall painting and your textile. The textile can be bundled up, packed away, and go somewhere else and hang in a different way. And I'm sure it did. It certainly hung in Bayeux cathedral in the 15th century, but I don't think that was necessarily its original destination, certainly not the present cathedral, which is later than the tapestry. So somebody had to think about this space and how best to fill it. And it's a very long space. I mean, it's 68 meters even with the end missing. So what were they going to put in it? How were they going to tell the story? And so somebody thinks up a narrative which is like a heroic battle between two heroes. So they forget about all the people who contributed to William's fleet, except his brothers. But there were lots of other people. They forget about all the other people who came over to fight with him. There was another bishop apart from Bishop Odo. There was the bishop, Geoffrey of Coutances, but we forget him. Harold, King of England, had recently won a great victory against the Vikings at Stamford Bridge. Oh, but that makes him look too good. We forget about that. So history is manipulated to suit this structured narrative of two proud and powerful men, one who gets trapped into swearing an oath to the other and then reneges on it, thus arguably committing the sin of perjury. And that's the Norman point of view, that Harold was a perjurer and therefore deserved to lose.

[Dave Musgrove]

So in your understanding, then, is that narrative story, is that created by one person? Presumably, that must be the work of one person coming up with the plot and deciding what to omit. As you said, like, there are notable omissions in it. And it's a narrative which is basically a significant for what it misses out as for what it includes.

[Professor Gail Owen Crocker]

Yes, yes. And in my book, I speak about the designer, and I think there is one mastermind at work. But then how do you fill the space? And this is where the designer learns from things like Trajan's Column. You fill the space with long shapes. So journeys on horseback, horses are long, they fill space. Journeys by sea, ships are long. They fill up your space. And then in between these journeys, you have encounters, and they are like tableaus, tableaux vivants. In plays, we don't know what the people are saying to each other. The captions simply tell us they spoke to each other. So we have to read the body language, the subtle spacing that the designer uses. Like the most important person is never overlapped by anybody else. The most important figures are slightly taller than the other figures. So we work out who's who, and there are captions, and people sometimes point to a name in the caption that helps as well, but we don't know what they're saying because the captions don't tell us. And these static scenes are where the discussions and decisions are taken. Yet an awful lot of the tapestry is the going to and fro between these things. And it seems to me that it has a visual rhythm, you know, long stop, long stop, long stop. Which must have been sort of quite pleasing on the wall. If you were some distance away, you'd see a wave, like movement along the length of it.

[Dave Musgrove]

Yeah, it's got a narrative flow to it, hasn't it? Okay, so you've got some sort of overarching vision, somebody who's saying, this is the story that I want to tell. And then presumably that person is transmitting that narrative to an artist or artist to actually visualize, and then that is being committed onto the linen sheets in some way so that the actual embroiderers are able to follow that design. So that comes to the question then, which I get asked sometimes in talks when I talk about tufts. I know you do. Which is, was it made by nuns? So who was actually doing the stitching?

[Professor Gail Owen Crocker]

The stitching? Well, we don't know, but I think it must have gone out to different workshops, because the stitching is the really slow part about it, isn't it? You've got your woven cloth, you've had your spinning, you've had your dyeing done. Here you are, you've got your drawing. But stitching is laborious. They have to push the needle through, put a hand underneath and pull it out, then push it up again. Even if they're professional, and I'm sure they work fast, it's still relatively a slow business. So I think it's in nine pieces. We know it's in nine pieces. I think it probably went out to different workshops to be embroidered. Now, some of those may have been convent workshops, some may have been secular. We just don't know. Was it nuns? Well, it might have been men as well. It isn't part of the Anglo Saxon view of manhood to do things like embroidery. Male Anglo Saxons, like to think of themselves as heroic warriors or ascetics, but what about the people who don't have it in them to be a heroic warrior or an ascetic? And later in the Middle Ages, when Opus Anglicanum is really popular embroidery, we have men doing the embroidery and men indeed own the workshops, so why not in the Anglo Saxon period, all the Anglo Saxon embroiderers we know by name were women, but they weren't doing this kind of embroidery, they were doing silk and gold work. We have absolutely no English evidence of this kind of colorful wool on linen work at all. We do have colourful weavings and embroideries from Scandinavia, but we're not saying this is Scandinavian.

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[Dave Musgrove]

so I'd like you to try and imagine the scene when they bring together the first two panels, having worked on them. And famously the panels don't quite line up, do they? So we've got the first panel and the second panel and the top border that goes above the main frieze. It doesn't quite fit, does it? So that must have been a bad moment, mustn't it?

[Professor Gail Owen Crocker]

It must have been. But they didn't unpick the border and restitch it in a slope, which they could have done. They lived with it. But perhaps it wasn't seen. If it was a seamstress who joined them together, her job was joining them together, not matching the pattern. So she's working on the back, isn't she? And she's working with consistent, neat stitches. She's probably joining them all together. It's only when they turn it round to the front and they see this. Oops, yes. They never do it again. Which suggests that that one was joined first and they learned from the mistake. I have wondered whether the person who laid out the cartoon on the first piece was expecting a closing border, because there's an opening border and they left space at the end. There's quite a big gap in the main register. And I wonder if they were expecting somebody to say, yes, we'll put a border in there. But no, that's not what we're doing. We're doing a long continuous freeze, aren't we?

[Dave Musgrove]

Hang on, let me just. For the benefit of the listeners, so you suggest. So the tapestry as it stands, as we understand, has always been one long, 68 meter long length.

[Professor Gail Owen Crocker]

Yes. And the joints are embroidered over, so you can't take it apart.

[Dave Musgrove]

But you're wondering if perhaps in the. Somebody was thinking they might have been embroidered as separate panels that weren't intended to be stitched together.

[Professor Gail Owen Crocker]

Yes. I think the person who did the first one and knew there was a border at the start would have just assumed, this is what I'm doing and there'll be a border on the end. And it is a bit strange. There's nothing happening in the middle and the two birds at the top appear to go to sleep. Is this the border artist being a bit witty and saying, oh, well, there's nothing going on here, we'll have a nap sort of thing? Whereas the bottom border has been left blank quite a long way back and then that's filled in. I think you get an extra beast in there and you don't really see the join in the bottom border. It's the top one that's a mess.

[Dave Musgrove]

So when you're looking at. And having spent so many years studying it and thinking about it. So do you think you can identify the individual hands of certain embroiderers and bits of work that they delivered?

[Professor Gail Owen Crocker]

Not the embroiderers, no. You can see that this one is different from this one, but I can't be sure that this embroiderer occurs again. But different artists. Yes, I can. I think there are sections of the main register that have a completely different artist with a slightly different training. And I think the borders have different artists. Probably top and bottom borders have different artists and I think there are probably quite a few hands involved in the borders. So no, I can't do it for the embroiderers, but yes, I can do it for the artists.

[Dave Musgrove]

I just want to think about the designer just a little bit more because sort of you sketched out the narrative for us earlier, this idea that it's kind of a buddy movie, essentially between Harold and William and sort of missing out lots of other stuff. And really the setup is to show that Harold kind of goes from a hero to a zero. He makes this terrible mistake, making this sacred promise. And that gives William basically the right to invade England, right?

[Professor Gail Owen Crocker]

Yes. He's trapped into making the sacred promise.

[Dave Musgrove]

Exactly, exactly. So it's all about legitimising William's conquest, in a way. So what do you think the designer thought of that? Is that something that the designer was specifically trying to do? And do you agree with any of these ideas that might have been subversive messages to what is being displayed in the narrative?

[Professor Gail Owen Crocker]

Yes, I think it's very likely that the patron is a Norman and there is an instruction. We are going to tell this tale of victory. Interesting that we don't go back in history to William's claim. We just join it in the middle, don't we? With Harold going on a journey, we're not told where he's going or why he's going. They may have taken it for granted, but we're not told. But the designer and one subsidiary artist, at least, were very educated people and they knew the manuscripts in those Canterbury libraries really well. And recently I've been looking at the manuscripts that they chose to illustrate scenes of the Normans, and I do find a common theme that if you look at what the text is saying around the drawings that they borrow, it's always talking about tyranny and injustice. So, yes, I think the designer was saying something subversive about the Normans, but I don't think any. But a very few people who knew these manuscripts really well, namely monks of these monasteries, would have known it, because the main manuscript that is used is the Old English illustrated Hexateuch. It was written in Old English. And the Normans, even if they could read, and I don't think the seculars could, they would not be reading Old English. The other Bible manuscripts that are borrowed from are Psalters, and they have tiny little diagrams, little drawings, and you have to be looking very closely to spot the resemblances. It will be a tiny little drawing at the top of a page. But when I look at it, and I can look at it, of course, in a digitized version on my screen, and I can blow up that tiny drawing and I see that, yes, the tapestry is borrowing from that, so I read the associated psalm, and it's somebody being unjust or tyrannical.

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[Dave Musgrove]

So that's really interesting. So just sort of summarize for anyone who's not super familiar with the story. So the reason why we regularly say that the tapestry was probably made in England is that it borrows quite specifically in both style and substance, from these Old English illuminated manuscripts that we know are in Canterbury monastic houses. And they were telling biblical stories, often Old Testament stories.

[Professor Gail Owen Crocker]

They were Old Testament texts? Yes. I mean, one, the first few books of the Old Testament and the others are Psalms. So. Yes, straight from the Bible.

[Dave Musgrove]

Yeah. And it kind of plonks these scenes into the tapestry narrative, which is obviously telling a completely different story many, many centuries later. And what you're suggesting is that kind of like, if you were really knowledgeable about what was in those original illuminated manuscripts and you saw how the scenes were being portrayed in the 1066 narrative, then you would make the Lincolns think, okay, I see there's a message here of unjustness and tyranny, because I know that's what's happening in the original images they borrowed from.

[Professor Gail Owen Crocker]

Yes, in one case, and it's the most blatant one. He does, as you say, plonk the whole image. There's another one that's more subtle, which is taken from three different places. Two places in one manuscript of the Psalms and one from the Old English hexateuch. But they're all saying the same thing.

[Dave Musgrove]

So does that tell us then, that we say that the embroiderers were probably English? Does that tell us that the designer was probably English as well?

[Professor Gail Owen Crocker]

I think the designer probably was English, yes, but working in a new Anglo Norman environment, perhaps with a new Norman abbot, if he's working at St. Augustine's a new Norman Archbishop of Canterbury, Alan Frank, if he's at Christchurch, so having to pay lip service to the new Norman regime. I do wonder if it makes the tapestry a little bit later, if some of the atrocities have happened as well as the Battle of Hastings, whether there have been sort of tyrannical putting down of rebellions. But I haven't developed that at all yet. I hadn't.

[Dave Musgrove]

And you talked about the patron. So most people think the patron, that is, the person who kind of paid for it or wanted it to be made was this guy, Odo of Beo, William the Conqueror's half brother. Don't want to go into that story here particularly, but I do wonder what you think. Obviously, the tapestry is very much in our minds at the moment, because it has come to Britain to be displayed in the British Museum, to this narrative, to this underlying current of it's people using this language, this quite nationalistic language. What do you think happened to the tapestry when it was made and what was it actually supposed to be used for immediately it was created?

[Professor Gail Owen Crocker]

I think it probably went to hang in the square keep of a Norman castle in England. In England, I think it probably hung at shoulder level round a room as people sat round, which is a level where you can see it clearly. And it was explained to me by architecture historians that if there was a spiral staircase in the corner, that accounts for the way the tapestry starts partway along the wall and there wouldn't be doors interrupting it. But you can't have doors interrupting the tapestry because it would hang across them. So I think that's probably where it first hung. It could easily be moved to hang in a rectangular hall. And if you happen to have King William present, you could easily move it along so that a fine picture of King William was opposite where he sat. We know it was later suspended round the nave of Bayeux Cathedral, but it's very high suspended that way, and it looks a bit absurd and unsupported hanging from the pillars. But it was appropriately hung there during the feast of relics. And of course, Harold swears his oath on relics, so they were using that message when they hung it there.

[Dave Musgrove]

So that stacks up. And what's your theory? And it can only be a theory because we have no documentary evidence for this. But what's your theory as to how it ended up in Bayeux? The first reference we have is 1476, and that's when we can definitively say it was there. How did it get there, do you think?

[Professor Gail Owen Crocker]

I think it must have been through Odo. Odo was William's half brother, younger half brother, and he was Bishop of Bayeux. But at the Conquest, he was also made Earl of Kent with authority over St. Augustine's Abbey. So he is a one man link between Kent, where we're fairly sure it was made, Canterbury, where we're sure it was made, and Bayeux, where it was found. So I think it probably went with Odo. It's been suggested that it was made for the inauguration of his new cathedral. I don't really go along with that because I think it was made as a secular ornament, really. But he may have thought, oh, what a fine thing for my new cathedral. He was a generous benefactor, so he may have taken it for that, or he may have taken it to hang in his home in Normandy when he left. He was banished, of course, or the King may have taken it. I like this fine tapestry. It's commemorating my victory. So it might have gone to the Royal palace in Caen, which is a very short distance from Bayeux. But I'm sure that Odo is the connecting link. That's what I believe in.

[Dave Musgrove]

The one thing we can be fairly certain of is that it. It didn't travel in a vibration. Damping mechanism like, has been deployed to bring it back to England.

[Professor Gail Owen Crocker]

It was probably in a cedar wood box.

[Mike Suiter]

Yeah.

[Dave Musgrove]

But, you know, that must have done the job because the tapestry has survived. So to bring this up to the present day, last thing, obviously, we've got this big exhibition, this kind of generational display that's happening in the British Museum, getting so much press and attention, people getting quite excited about it. What's your hope for this exhibition? What's it gonna do for people's interest in the tapestry?

[Professor Gail Owen Crocker]

I think it brings the 11th century to life. And, you know, who normally thinks about the 11th century as such? We all know about the date of the Battle of Hastings, but what does it mean? And here they're real people holding things, talking, animated. It is very alive. And when you see it in real life, as opposed to looking at a photograph of it, I think that three dimensional aspect of it comes out because the wool stands out from the limit. I think they'll also be impressed by its survival because it's there, holes and patches and all. It is going to look quite ragged. It's not going to be ironed, you know, for the exhibition.

[Dave Musgrove]

Let's hope not.

[Professor Gail Owen Crocker]

At least I hope it isn't. It is as it is. I think they're having fun with it in the British Museum. They're going to have these enlarged animations of individual figures behind it. So it's going to be quite entertaining for people. I think people will be fascinated with the animals both in the borders and in the main register, because the horses are very busy and there are dogs very busy running forward. And there are birds of prey as well. I think they're interesting, of course, people who like battles. I say very little about the battles in my book, really, because we don't seem to have borrowings from the manuscripts in the battles. So I don't have so much to say about them. But people who are interested in medieval warfare, and there are many, many reenactors who are, will be fascinated to see it in its raw state. But interestingly, you know, the biotapestry doesn't show blood. It conveys the agony by the contortions of the bodies as they fall, but they don't sort of try and do stem stitch rows of blood. That wouldn't work really. Isn't it interesting? We talk of it as a bloodbath, but we don't actually see the blood.

[Dave Musgrove]

There is a lot of bodies hacked up.

[Professor Gail Owen Crocker]

Oh, yes, yes, Bodies and body parts and, oh, dying in grotesque falls. Yes. And when your hands are down, you're dying.

[Dave Musgrove]

Yeah. Right, okay. So lots of reasons to go and look at it. Just. So super last thing, when you go and look at the tapestry, what one bit do you make a beeline for? What's the one bit of the tapestry that really speaks to you?

[Professor Gail Owen Crocker]

Well, I love the opening scene because it's setting the scene. It's telling us that England is rich and cultured. Just look at King Edward's clothes and his magnificent palace all around him. That's what they're fighting for and that's what the whole thing is about. They're fighting to own this, to be like that. So, yes, I look at the beginning, but Obviously with only 40 minutes, I can't linger on it. I'll have to. Have to move on.

[Dave Musgrove]

Yes. No, it'll be a tight time scale to have a look at the tapestry. You'll probably go once or twice. I expect Gael to get the full experience, I would have thought. Well, Gael, thank you so much for your time. It's been really interesting chatting to you and learning from your tapestry wisdom and your book. The design of the bear tapestry is out now and goes into a lot more detail, into some of the themes that we've talked about. So well worth a read if you are a biotapestry enthusiast like myself. So, Gail, thanks for your time.

[Professor Gail Owen Crocker]

Thank you.

[Mike Suiter]

That was Professor Gail Owen Crocker. Tickets for the British Museum exhibition of the tapestry are going on sale in tranches, so keep an eye on their website for details of when the next batch goes on sale. Dave Musgrove is presenting a six part video guide to the tapestry for a History Extra Academy series in the Autumn. So sign up to our History Extra newsletter for updates. You'll find a link for that in the description for this episode. This episode is brought to you by Snapdragon. Take the leash off your laptop with

[Professor Gail Owen Crocker]

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[Professor Gail Owen Crocker]

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