The FAFO of Harold Godwinson: how the Bayeux Tapestry tells a moral tale and a constitutional story

14 October 2026 Anniversary of the Battle of Hastings * Looking at a great work of medieval sequential art * The Bayeux Tapestry, as convention requires we call the embroidery currently on show at the British Museum, is a familiar thing. It is so familiar that it is difficult to look at it and and think about it afresh. It is the stuff of a thousand book plate illustrations. Indeed, it is almost impossible to buy a book about Norman history without those figures on the cover. * The Tapestry dominates our visual imagining of the conquest of 1066. Yet for a long time – centuries – the Tapestry was essentially unknown. There is no doubt that it was created quite soon after the events it depicts (the various details of the weapons and ships depicted tell us this) but its existence was only recorded centuries later. And it was not really known about in England until the 1700s. This lateness means two things. First, the Tapestry was a late addition to our understanding of what happened in…