So the Bayeux Tapestry is finally coming to London, and the British Museum assures us that its journey ‘leaves nothing to chance’. How reassuring. One would think we were transporting the Crown Jewels through a war zone, rather than a 70-metre strip of embroidered linen.
But no, this is the sacred relic of the Norman Conquest, the very fabric of our national humiliation woven in wool. The French, in their infinite condescension, are lending it to us on a short-term visa. How gracious.
They know we cannot bear to look at it for too long, lest we be reminded that we were once conquered, subjugated, and remade by a foreign power. The Tapestry is a monument to our defeat, yet we treat it as though it were our own. This is the same Britain that prides itself on never having been invaded since 1066 – conveniently forgetting that the invasion was so successful it left us speaking a mongrel tongue and yearning for lost Saxon liberties.
The Tapestry’s journey is a logistical marvel, no doubt, but what of its metaphysical journey? What does it mean for a nation to borrow its own history from the very people who made it? We are not borrowing the Tapestry; we are borrowing the permission to remember.
And in that permission lies our quiet, polite surrender. The British Museum will display it with all the pomp and celebration befitting a victory. But the Tapestry is not a victory.
It is a chronicle of incompetence, treachery, and the sheer randomness of fate. Harold Godwinson’s eye socket, pierced by an arrow, is the emblem of our nation: a king undone by a stray shot, a kingdom lost to a lucky Norman. And now we queue to gaze upon our own dismemberment.
The Tapestry’s threadbare linen is a mirror held up to our present day. We are still being conquered, not by Normans but by the bland forces of globalism, bureaucracy, and the worship of efficiency. The Tapestry’s journey is a microcosm of our age: everything is planned, insured, and climate-controlled, and yet we sense that something vital has slipped away.
The French know this. They are lending us the Tapestry to remind us that history is not a dead letter. It is alive, it is political, and it is embarrassing.
So let us view the Tapestry with a clear eye. Let us see it not as a treasure but as a warning. And let us spare a thought for poor Harold, whose kingdom was stolen while he was looking the other way.
We have been looking the other way for a thousand years.
