How a 1,000-Year-Old Tapestry Took London by Storm

From the New York Times, I'm Michael Bavaro. This is the Daily on Sunday. In London right now, there are sold-out shows, huge crowds, and audible gasps. I thought, "Oh, my God, we weren't going to miss this having not seen it in a lifetime yet." A nationwide media, really. We're here on our honeymoon. How hard was it to get to your honeymoon? I sat in queue for five and a half hours, and I got him. Over a tapestry, a changed British history, you know. A very old and very long and very beloved tapestry that people cannot wait to see. I got it because I'm staying at a really lovely hotel. You're not one of the people who's paying like a thousand pounds a night to get access. Yes, yes, yes, yes, don't tell anybody. I'll be poor and go without food for the next week. But it was worth it for that. Today, the story of the Bayou tapestry, how it became central to British identity, why it remained outside of Britain for nearly 1,000 years, and it's improbable but temporary return to the United Kingdom. My colleague, culture reporter Alex Marshall, tells the epic yarn, "It's Sunday, September 20th." Alex Marshall, welcome to the Sunday Daily. Thanks for having me, Michael. So Alex, correct me if I'm wrong here, tapestries rarely take the world by storm. I'm pretty sure no tapestry before has ever taken the world by storm, although we should probably say this is not a case of a tapestry taking the world by storm. This is the case of an embroidery taking the world by storm. Okay, okay. So we're already splitting hairs here. Can you just help me understand the difference between a tapestry and an embroidery? I do think this is important to start with because otherwise we will have the embroidery mafia chasing us both down and they've got quite sharp pins. A tapestry is woven on a loom and embroidery is stitched by hand and what we're here to talk about today is sadly an embroidery that happens due to the fault of a 18th century French monk to be known to the world as the Bayou tapestry. Well, I'm going to take that distinction and politely store it away and proceed perhaps to keep referring to it as a tapestry, but we'll see. I think even the entire world does that and given the British Museum is currently eulogizing to the entire world about this Bayou tapestry. I think we should go with the terminology that the world knows about and take the risk. Okay. Yes. Alex, what is it that makes this embroidery, this tapestry, this piece of fabric so very special? How did it become the Mona Lisa of textiles? I mean, take your pick of reasons. I mean, let's start just with the sheer scale of this thing. I mean, it is 220 feet long. I mean, very few artifacts in the world at that length that could fit in a stadium. They could wrap around the outside of a basketball court. Well, it's almost 1,000 years old. It is still as vibrant and bright in its colours almost as a day it was made, like it hasn't been faded. It's filled with holes, it's got tears in it, it's been stained. And then it's up there for British people with the crown jewels, with stone henge. The Bayou tapestry is something so important we teach it at schools. We force it down children's necks and it is back for the first time since it was made. And that for British people has almost set the country on fire. Everyone's talking about it, everyone wants to see it, it is the hottest ticket in town. I'm straining and struggling for an American point of reference because what you're describing is nearly 1,000 years old. And as you've probably heard, we just celebrated our 250th anniversary, so we just cannot compete. I don't think you can, but the strangest thing is whenever British people have been trying to sum it up for me because they despite my accent weirdly assume I'm American when I say I work for the New York Times, they always go, it's like the declaration of independence to you. Before I say that to an American, they go, yeah, no, we wouldn't all queue up for nine hours together ticket to see the declaration of independence guilty. I would not. So Alex, I want you to talk through the story, the visual story that this tapestry actually depicts, because I think that will help our American brains to grasp why this embroidery, as you say, has become one of the hottest tickets in London right now. So the Sparknecks version, the start of the tapestry, Edward the Confessor, King of England, he's childless, he's ill, he knows he needs an heir. So he talks to Harold Godwinson, his brother-in-law, and sends him off to France to the Norman King, Duke William. Harold meets William, basically says you can come and be King of England when Edward dies. My brother has no heirs, we nominate you, come over, turn England into your kingdom. You seem a great guy. Harold in the tapestry has quite a devilish moustache, and he looks a bit like someone you might have seen in 1970s porn film in America. I've seen Boogie Knight, he looks like he's walked out of one of those sets. I'm sorry, did you say Boogie Knight? Boogie Knight, isn't that the film? No, yeah, absolutely, they Boogie all night. So he just looks very, very loose, and that might give a hint about what's to come. Back in England, Edward dies, and Harold decides to supple a fast one, essentially. He is soon on the throne himself. Oh, so he renegs, he pulls a dick chainy, he says, "I will be your actual leader, forget the promises I've made to William over there in France." Assuming he actually did that, it is a tapestry of the victors, it's their story. So the tapestry does not depict him twirling his moustache evenly, but you can imagine him at that moment doing just that. Edward obviously gets to William in France. How could it not? And William is pissed. He is like, "What on earth has that guy done?" He doesn't wait a minute. He sends all his men off to build a fleet. He is going to invade. He's going to take that throne for himself. Wow. And we are now in 1066, this pivotal year in English history, the year every child learns in school, like people even say, like, 1066 and all that. You don't even have to know what it means. So very soon, William is landing in England with his forces on the south coast. And he is causing havoc. He starts burning down villages. It's the perennial raping and pillaging that we all know from history. When I was actually in the British Museum looking at this recently, there were some children who their teacher was trying to tell them about this era and say, like, what did I tell you? William was doing in Britain. And the children replied that he was rage-baiting. He was rage-baiting Harold. So yeah, William rage-baits his way through southern England. And eventually, Harold decides he has to confront him. And there is this huge battle. There is carnage. The battle goes on all day. Most medieval battles apparently only lasted a few hours. This goes on. It is bloody. According to the tapestry, there are beheadings. There's bones going everywhere. And eventually, William succeeds. Harold, isolated, is history, says, shot in the head by an arrow. That leaves the English-throne free for William. He becomes William the Conqueror, and he takes over England's changing the course of the country's history. Wow. That is quite a drama. Yes. So far, what you're describing and what this tapestry in shrines sounds a whole lot like British defeat and a pretty humiliating defeat, I might add, political, military, cultural over time. So I guess I'm struggling to see why would this celebrate it? Why would this become a beloved artifact and so central to British identity? It might be a humiliating defeat, but it is also an event that completely changed English culture. It changed our language, it changed our laws, it changed the aristocracy. And so for that, it is key to Britain's history. and also it's so foundational perhaps because we have this tapestry. If we didn't have this, you know, this artwork that documents it in the most accessible, simplistic, and at times, even funny, and as well as brutal way, if we didn't have this one-off unique artifact, maybe we wouldn't remember it as much. It's just become part of fabric here. So to speak. So to speak. So in the aftermath of this pretty major British defeat and humiliation, who commissions the creation of this tapestry to tell the story of Britain going to pieces here. There's one slight problem with the bio tapestry, which is there's a lot is unknown, but historians think it was commissioned by a guy called Bishop Odo who was William the Conqueror's half-brother. The reason they think he commissioned it is because he was probably not a very big figure in all these events of 1066, but he appears throughout the tapestry, even in the climatic battle scenes. Got it. He likely commissioned it in Canterbury in England, which had the best embroiderers at the time, and they made it probably for the renovated cathedral in Bia. So as soon as they finished making it, it was probably spirited across the English Channel to France, and it's been there ever since. Why does it never, ever somehow return to Britain from France? These two countries are geographically close and over time developed fairly warm relations. So how come it remains essentially walled off from Britain? When it's not for a lack of trying? I mean, Britain's wanted this item on loan for decades, but in France, they just say this is too fragile to ever send abroad. And that's a good reason because throughout its history, the tapestry has been manhandled. It's been transported along bumpy roads. I mean, at one point Napoleon brought it to Paris and displayed it in the Louvre because he saw it as a sort of a good way of showing, maybe I've got links to William the Conqueror, I can take over Britain too. At one point, the Nazis started moving it around. They saw it as both an emblematic example of German culture, but also they saw it as foreshadowing their own desire to take over England. Well, so when the Nazis occupied France? Yes, they're moving it around, but they managed, I suppose, because of its scale, not to take it out of France. They tried desperately to take it out of France. Towards the end, they wanted to get it to Berlin, but the Allied invasion, fortunately, got to Paris just before they managed to get it out. They have infamously left a cigar burn on it. When we get to post World War II, this thing has folds in it, hairs in it, stains in it, rips. I mean, it is an incredibly delicate document. So as soon as the British start really seriously saying, "Can we have it?" Especially for Queen Elizabeth II's coronation, they say, "Can we bring it to London?" They start saying, "No, no, no. We're not moving this under any circumstance." Right, I'm hearing that French voice in my head, "No, no, no, me sir. It is not possible. It is not possible." I think, exactly right. Well, then the inevitable question is, what changed and what happened that suddenly made the fragility of this 200 and something foot-long artifact, no longer an obstacle to moving it from France to Britain? It all comes down to one man, Emmanuel Macron. He is the egetist behind this impossible loan. The impossible loan. What we're going to talk about, the impossible loan, and how it comes to be right after the break. Alex, tell us the story of this impossible loan overseen by the president of France that somehow brings this tapestry embroidery to London. So this actually, like everything in the tapestry, is an annoyingly long story. It starts in 2018 when there's an Anglo-French summit for reestablishing our friendship post-Brexit. Britain's left the European Union. Relations are really bad. Macron decides, "I know how I can repair things. I'll announce I'm going to loan the tapestry." The reaction in France is at least in the conservation world one of horror. I mean, this is not happening. You are not loaning this item. I've spoken to a former head of the Bay of Tapestry Museum who said when she heard about it, she just thought he was taking the piss. She thought it was insane. This is never going to happen. And it looked like she was right because it just quickly disappears off the agenda. There was such strong opposition to this. I mean, even in Britain, the artist David Hockney, before he died, he at one point wrote an opinion piece saying, "As an artist, I am reckless, but I would never do something as reckless as this." So everyone is remembering the carelessness of the Nazis and Napoleon and thinking to themselves even under the best of circumstances with professional movers and preservationists involved, this is going to go horribly sideways. I think even people who didn't remember Napoleon or the Nazis were thinking this could go sideways. You just don't take risks with artifacts as such, well drawn out. The Louvre does not want to move the Mona Lisa. The Italians don't want to stick Michelangelo's David in a crate and put it on the tour around America. You just don't risk a world masterpiece. And then suddenly, we did our best not to be put in the situation to make this loan of biote-- Last year. Macron is back again. And we found the best experts of the world. And he's at the British Museum. To explain in perfect details why it was totally impossible. And he says, "We are beyond the experts." This loan is happening. We have gone beyond the experts. And we managed to find solutions. It's almost saying we have been reckless. So thank you, Madame Limit. But for political, diplomatic, showmanship reasons, we are making this happen. Okay, so once Kandu Macron decides that France can do this, what are the logistics involved in actually making this loan happen? I think there are actually two key reasons why this happened. One, the museum in Bayer is closing for innovation. So you have an opportunity. This is going to have to go off display anyway. So if you are putting it into a box, why not put it into a box and then transport that box across the English Channel. The other thing is France and Britain so wanted this to happen, that they were willing to pay for the science and the conservation techniques to make this work. I mean, I spoke to a conservative recently who said, you know, what they would normally do for moving a tapestry like this is put it on the floor, put a roller on top of it and roll it up. And that is the most dangerous thing, you know, for such a delicate artifact that would be full hardy. But what they have done for this is like Star Trek. You know, so much money and technology has been put into this one move is like nothing these conservatives have seen before. Okay, we'll describe some of the Star Trek worthy steps that have been taken to make this seamless. It is really delicate, precise work. Initially in Bayer, the tapestry was hanging by curtain hooks to a curtain rail. They had to work out how to get it off that safely into a crate. What they ended up coming up with after lots of scientists put lots of studies is they got a hundred people to stand along the length of it and move it like two inches at a time. Oh my gosh. This is amazing videos of a woman with a headset. It's almost a military operation. You can almost see the beads of sweats dripping off their faces with nervous energy as they try and move it without risking damaging it. Once they get it off this curtain rail, they put it onto and I'm sorry this is sounding so dense, but they put it onto another rail, which then folds up so you end up with a tapestry and almost like a concertina shade, very loose, which is then put into a box. Normally if you were transporting a work of art across the ocean, you just put that into a wooden crate, drive it there. What they do is put that crate into another crate, I mean, bear with me, which is surrounded by springs that are basically used in earthquake zones. Wow. I mean, one of the people who worked on it subscribe to us. like an old-school baby carriage. You know, you should be able to take this tapestry along a bouncy road and it will not wake up. It is not going to start crying and screaming at you. But then even once they'd come up with this, you know, technology used to stop buildings falling down. Right. That isn't the end. They then come up with the routes to take it to London. They drive that route several times to work out where the potholes are. So they can then analyse this even more to make sure it is safe as possible. Once all that is done, every measure is taken to make it safe. They are then still worried that when they drive this, maybe some terrorist, maybe an eco-protester is going to try and steal this. Naturally. So you do all this work and then you get to July the 9th this year. It's 6.15pm. A bright yellow truck leaves Bayer. The tapestry is in the back. They get the French Security Service to accompany it in the highest secretive midnight move. That truck drives onto a train. The train goes to Britain. The truck drives off it and then goes incredibly slowly through the night to the British Museum. But then of course it has to be unpacked. Unfortunately, yes, the operation to get it out of that crate was just as rigorous and involved as the one to get it out the display in Bayer. There again, about a hundred people lined up. They opened the crate on this folding panel so delicately. They checked every single panel to make sure the tapestry once unfold wasn't ripped, wasn't damaged. They then had to lift it very delicately onto a railing that then went up to the ceiling of this exhibition hall in the British Museum and then lowered the tapestry onto a specially designed table, which cost two million pounds. One table? I should actually Google it to GBP to USD. Got $2.7 million. Is it made out of gold? Looks like it's made out of wood actually. It's got very thick glass. It's temperature controlled. It's basically the greatest table you could ever have if you wanted to display a unique tapestry in one long 220 feet line. I mean, it only just squeezes into the British Museum. I think there's something like 20 centimetres clearance. That is snug. The British Museum were telling me they'd written to Guinness hoping to get the Guinness world record for the longest ever art table. Sounds a bit niche. I did tell them that was a bit desperate, but you know, all publicity is good publicity, I suppose. So once all of this painstaking cumbersome moving by truck and crate and hundreds of hands is done, what condition is the tapestry in when it arrives? Is this a success? Apparently so. I mean, everyone I've spoken to in very relief tones says it is perfectly fine. They found two threads that have broken, but that is two among millions. They also found some fibers in the bottom of the crate, but those might not be from the tapestry. They might be from like the jumper of one of the hundreds of people who was involved in moving this. I mean, when I actually learned of these breakages, I went to the main objector in France, a guy called Didier Reignner who runs an art magazine, and I sort of told him about this in almost expecting him to be up in arms. You were beating him. I'm a journalist. I was obviously impartial. I did not mind what response he gave me, but he he seems mildly non-plussed by it all. It's a triumph. It is a triumph. So when it opens just over a week ago, I made sure I was one of the first through the door. And to my completely untrained eyes, look perfectly fine. Okay, well, let's talk about what it was like for you to actually see this in the museum on its very fancy table right after the break. We'll be right back. Okay, Alex, set the scene for us. It is tapestry day for you there in London. How does it unfold? I turned up outside the British Museum in central London for 10 am to be one of the first people through those gates. And there's already a queue of people. We all shuffled into this line and walk into this huge, long dark room. And there it is. I'm looking literally the first scene. It's got Edward Confessor, and he's talking to two men, and he's trying to work out who his successor should be. And we walked along its length, seen, I'm only on the second scene, and the colours they are just so vibrant. He's red. By scene. I'm now on scene 5. All women know it. Slowly, slowly, slowly. I'm only on scene 8. Until the British Museum staff tried telling us to quicken up. I'm now in front of scene 17, and it's showing some of the Norman soldiers getting caught in quicksand. And it's just amazing how much these embroiderers managed to pack into this thing. A comet has appeared. It's Hayley's comet. You can tell it's a bad omen because people are looking at this comet and pointing up at it. With horror, they've got stuff. I am now surrounded by school kids and hoping they move along. The children in my visit just kept stopping at certain scenes. The more gruesome ones. There's a lot of nudity. The risque ones. It's like he's pleading with her to let them be together and she's sort of going on, not again. And there are 58 scenes. The tapestry shows this man holding a arrow in his eye, and Harold Robinson is dead. That is the end. William the Conqueror has conquered England. But as you're going along, for me what hit me was almost the connection to the people who have woven this, who sowed it. Because the images, they look like a cartoon that could have been made three years ago. It looks like something out of a Japanese anime studio. All the characters have Harold Godwinson. As I said, he has this very loose moustache, his eyebrows. You can see them. They're almost done in quizzical expressions. There are all these quirky elements to it. There are bits that look like surrealist painting. As a British person, there are many things that obviously I dislike about my country. There are things I regret. We are an empire. We just colonized half the world. We did lots of brutal horrific things. But one thing I do really like is our sense of creativity, our humour, and our absurdity. All of that is in this tapestry. There are in jokes. There's nudity. There are 93 penises in this thing. I'm sorry. 93 penises, you say? 93 or 94. There's an academic debate about one of them. 88 of them belong to horses, but the rest of the human. There are things you wouldn't expect. For example, 93 penises. I'm really getting from you, just how epic this tapestry is. I want to ask you now that you have seen it and you've spent all this time with it. If there's one scene, one moment in particular that struck you most deeply. The one I know I'm going to remember. I doubt anyone else would ever say this, but it is men suddenly chopping down trees to make the boats to invade England. And it didn't hit me emotionally. Your face looks very critical, Michael, like you're saying, "God, why pick something more exciting?" But the figures just had such movement to them. These were ordinary people, like swinging axes, trying to build boats. And suddenly I thought, "Oh, right, this is art." And once I'd got past that, I started seeing all these quirky, weird little bits. And that's when I started thinking, "Oh, right. These are people just like me who made these. These are people who were being creative, who wanted to be fun, who wanted to enjoy life even at a moment of terror." Like the women who made this had just lost their country. They might have even been doing this as force labor. They were certainly probably not doing it that willingly. This was a tapestry of the victor. And yet they still managed to get their own personality to have some fun with it. That's lovely. And I thought, "This is great." As you talked with all these people who were there viewing this alongside you, how did all those people that you interviewed, how did they react to seeing the tapestry? What did it. The depth of feeling of this, like just talking to them, just saying why are you here to see it? Yes, it makes me well up. Why is it making you well up? They were like, this is part of our country. It goes to the whole core of our history. It's so vivid, and as you walk along, you could read the story. This is two men fighting for the future of England. Happening in front of you, basically. Wonderful. That's standing at the end. Absolutely, seriously, outstanding. And there was one bizarre moment where a man walked out and told me he was going to get it to two. Just seeing it in, you know, I'm not the flesh in the stitch for the first time was absolutely amazing. You know, I want to get it tattooed on me one day. And not just any tattoo, but of the most famous scene. Harold, obviously. That would be shot in the other one. Yeah, yeah, I reckon he wouldn't have shot in the eye of either one. Alex, how do you make sense of all these folks that you're talking to describing so much meaning being derived from this tapestry? I mean, I'm thinking about this gentleman who tells you he might get a scene from a tattooed onto his body. I mean, that's a depth of feeling you don't expect from embroidery. I mean, how do you make sense of this thing doing so much to so many people? The thing about 1066, the events depicted in this tapestry is they're both so long ago such deep history. And in a way, so little understood that you can read whatever you want into this artifact. You know, you can see it as a moment that the country has found it. You can see it as a great celebration of how Britain is filled with people from all over the world. You can then, if you are anti-mygrant, you can see it as a moment. Britain is lost and a testament to that written under duress. You can see it as a great celebration of the monarchy. You can see it as an anti-war statement. You can see it as a pro-war statement. You can read whatever you want into this. You can just see it as an amazing artwork. And I think the fact this tapestry allows everyone to find themselves in it is what gives it its power. And plus it is 220 feet long and just so stunningly unique that you're just going to want to celebrate it as soon as you're in a room with it. In other words, everyone is projecting onto this tapestry, whatever they want to or need to project onto it. And that's what all these people in this line have been doing and will continue to do for as long as it's on loan in Britain. I wonder, Alex, how your experience at the museum and with the tapestry came to an end? Well, Michael, my experience ended like many museums visits do in the gift shop. [Laughter] There is bio-tapestry beer, bio-tapestry meat. I walked around, basically at a department store's worth of merch. I don't have street bugle if you ever want to call out orders in military camps or lead a hunting party. I wish I could say I resisted stocks, a chest set for almost just over a thousand dollars. I bought a wooden bio-tapestry postcard and sent it to my sister and a bio-tapestry Christmas tree decoration for myself. My Christmas tree this year is going to have a far too expensive Harold Godwinson being shot in the eye by an arrow as its key decoration. I cannot wait to see photos of that Christmas tree. Thank you for everything here today. This tour of the tapestry, you appreciate your time. Thank you. Check your email on Christmas Day. It'll be a photo there for you. This episode was produced by Lena Richards with Tina Antillini. It was edited by Wendy Dorr and engineered by Sophia Landman. It contains music from Dan Powell and Marion Luzano and has production assistance from Dahlia Hadad. That's it for this Sunday Daily. I'm Michael Baboro. See you tomorrow.