Napoleon Bonaparte saw it as a propaganda tool to promote his planned invasion of Britain. The Nazis were fascinated by it. Now, the Bayeux Tapestry is to return to England after more than 900 years, a 70m-long symbol of the UK’s post-Brexit reconciliation with France.
When it arrives in London next year, it will star in what George Osborne, the former Conservative chancellor who is now the British Museum’s chair, has boasted will be “the blockbuster show of our generation.”
The tapestry tells the story of a defining moment in England’s history — the Norman invasion of 1066 — and is a gripping comic strip-style tale of ambition, betrayal, the horror of war and death. Subplots abound — is that really the vanquished King Harold with an arrow in his eye? — and so do the merchandising opportunities.
The work, which is actually a multicoloured wool embroidery on a linen backing rather than a woven tapestry, is thought to have been made by nuns in England in the 11th century and tells the story of William the Conqueror’s victory over England’s then king Harold Godwinson. A BBC podcast recently concluded that it features 623 men, 190 horses, 37 ships and 35 dogs — but only three women.
Yet the story behind the landmark cultural deal, announced by French President Emmanuel Macron in July, is itself a saga stretching back years, only coming to fruition after diplomatic work at the highest level, secret backroom deals, last-minute skirmishes and cultural teeth-gnashing.
Macron had originally floated the idea of lending the work in 2018 at a summit with then prime minister Theresa May, but the project languished because of pushback from French cultural officials, a lack of political will, and pandemic-related museum closures.
Talks were rekindled in earnest only this year, as both sides sought to use a depiction of English humiliation as a symbolic affirmation of improved Anglo-French relations. Mutual co-operation now spans defence, illegal migration and a joint approach to the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine, leading Osborne to advocate embracing the cultural swap as a key “deliverable” of a UK-France summit in July.
But even at the eleventh hour, the two sides were at odds over the cost of moving UK artefacts to France, and a French demand that its citizens should be allowed to see the tapestry for free at the British Museum, according to those briefed on the talks, who along with several other key players would speak only anonymously.
The exchange ultimately happened because Macron and Britain’s King Charles wanted to show that the angst of Brexit was in the past. “It probably took more years to deliver this project than all the Brexit talks,” Macron joked in a speech to the British parliament last month.
“Though at the end of the day, we did it.”
In May, Sir Chris Bryant, the UK culture minister was in Cannes to make a speech extolling the British film industry when he had a surprise call: Rachida Dati, France’s culture minister, wanted to see him at her seafront hotel.
Dati made it clear that France was prepared to loan the tapestry, but it wanted some treasures never previously seen in France to come the other way.
“It felt a bit like they were googling all the most famous things in the British Museum,” says one British official involved in the talks. “They were originally thinking of the Rosetta Stone,” the official adds, referring to the museum’s most visited object, which was found by Napoleon’s troops then passed to the British upon his defeat. “That was complicated by the fact that the French found it and we took it off them.”
Instead Dati proposed the Sutton Hoo treasures, part of an extraordinary 7th-century Anglo-Saxon ship burial. The British Museum was also able to offer the Lewis Chessmen, medieval chess pieces discovered in 1831 on the Isle of Lewis, to museums in France. Other pieces from Wales and Northern Ireland will be added.
These talks took place in conditions of complete secrecy, with the aim of concluding a deal in time for Macron’s state visit in July. The British Museum’s rival, the V&A Museum, chaired by Labour grandee Sir Tristram Hunt, helped with conservation work on the tapestry and hoped to host it if it ever came to England, but was kept in the dark. “We are delighted for our colleagues,” says one V&A official, with studied irony.
The British Museum, one of the world’s biggest, not only had the artefacts the French wanted but also the capacity to accommodate the tapestry, along with the climate control and other features needed to protect it.
As officials worked on the fine details of the deal — with the blessing of Macron and King Charles — last-minute sticking points emerged, not least what UK officials say was a French demand for free admission for French citizens. “That was never going to happen,” says another UK official. “It was a try-on.”
French officials confirm there was some discussion about French people getting an “advantageous price” but that it proved too complicated. Instead both sides agreed to focus on getting as many children in to see the tapestry as possible.
The British side also claims Paris wanted the UK to foot the bill not only for moving the tapestry from Bayeux to London — the borrower normally pays in such deals — but also for shipping its treasures to museums in Normandy. “That was also a non-starter,” says one British official. French officials say that was not discussed at a senior level. The cost of transporting the tapestry is expected to run to millions of euros and the UK Treasury is expected to indemnify the massive insurance costs.
Shipping the tapestry is fraught with risk. French cultural figures fear it could be damaged and already both sides are working through the options, including doing dummy runs with pretend tapestries to manage the vibrations.
French officials say the tapestry is likely to be moved by truck. “The main thing is to prevent, as much as possible, rough handling and vibrations,” says one.
Textile experts and engineers in Bayeux have already devised a method to extract the tapestry and put it in storage in September when the museum it is currently housed in closes for a major overhaul. Using the existing metal rail and hooks at the top, it will be carefully slid into a large metal screen that then folds up like an accordion. It took several dozen people, each stationed a few metres apart along the tapestry, to carry out the delicate operation during a test in April.
When it arrives at its temporary home, it will no longer be hung, as textiles experts now believe doing so causes uneven stress as gravity pulls on the fabric, causing creases, stretches, or tears. At both the British Museum and its renovated home in Bayeux, it will be displayed lying on long inclined tables.
The British Museum is expecting huge interest when the tapestry finally goes on show in September 2026. One insider talks of it being potentially more popular than the hugely successful 2007 Terracotta Army exhibition that drew 850,000 visitors.
In the museum’s wildest dreams, it could even start to approach the fame of the legendary Treasures of Tutankhamun exhibition of 1972, which attracted almost 1.7mn visitors.
“The tapestry ‘coming home’ — an idea of President Macron’s picked up enthusiastically by the British Museum — is of enormous symbolic importance,” says Sir Peter Westmacott, Britain’s former ambassador to France.
“Lending it now, in exchange for the loan of Sutton Hoo and other treasures, is a sign that France as well as Britain wants to rebuild people-to-people links after the bad blood generated by Brexit.”
The loan of the Bayeux Tapestry to Britain would have certainly never happened if its current home, a museum in a repurposed 17th-century seminary, was not in need of major renovations.
The project to overhaul the popular museum, which had been in the works since 2013, was fraught both nationally and locally given the priceless nature of the medieval artefact and its role in driving tourism to the area. Some 400,000 people visit annually, with over 70 per cent coming from abroad. Many stop at the nearby D-Day landing beaches and second world war cemeteries as well.
Although it is owned by the French state, Bayeux has been the tapestry’s legal steward for centuries. That has allowed the town’s mayors to veto any loan — which they have done, twice.
Earlier attempts by Britain to borrow the tapestry, in 1953 for Queen Elizabeth’s coronation and in 1966 for the anniversary of the Battle of Hastings, foundered for technical and political reasons.
As plans for the €38mn renovation slowly progressed, Macron and May made the surprise announcement at the 2018 Franco-British summit that the Bayeux Tapestry would be loaned to the UK.
The thinking was that since the delicate, ancient piece would have to be moved and stored for two years in any case, there was a unique opportunity to send it to the UK. The pledge was feted in Britain, but carried a caveat that few there seemed to notice: the loan would only happen if “the scientific conditions for its restoration and preservation are met”.
British officials insist that the putative agreement stalled because of the years of bitter haggling that followed Britain’s vote to leave the EU in 2016. But in France, curators, culture ministry officials and politicians have spent the years since wrangling over whether the loan was technically feasible, and the idea seemed to have been forgotten.
During the peak season, conditions in Bayeux are not ideal for either the tapestry or visitors. In the dimly lit, temperature-controlled gallery, crowds have to walk single file along the tapestry, relying on audio guides since there are no other explanations. The artefact is hung in a U-shape to fit in the gallery.
The planned renovation will create a new modern wing where it will be displayed in a straight line rather than a curve and its full splendour will be apparent from elevated vantage points.
While the renovation enjoys unanimous support, the idea of loaning the Bayeux Tapestry has been more divisive in France, with politicians pushing for it and art experts against it.
In Paris, culture ministry officials discreetly slow-walked the process to undermine the directives from the Élysée Palace, say people familiar with the deliberations. In 2020, nine textile experts inspected every centimetre of the tapestry — an unprecedented effort that found 24,204 stains, 9,646 gaps and 30 “non-stabilised tears”, according to their report.
A scientific committee concluded that restoration was necessary, and that it should occur during the museum’s closure ahead of the 1,000th anniversary of the Conqueror’s birth in 2027.
“Any movement or contact represents a danger for the tapestry. There could be irreversible damage,” says Thalia Bajon-Bouzid, a restorer of medieval textiles who took part in the inspection.
Loïc Jamin, a deputy mayor for culture and tourism in Bayeux, says the city began another lobbying push for the loan to Britain once architects were selected in 2023. “We pleaded with so many ministers, Brigitte Macron too, and the president himself,” he tells the FT.
“The renovation seemed to us the only time in history we could lend the tapestry to our British friends,” he adds. “We owe them that much! William the Conqueror invaded in 1066 but there are thousands of British men in the Bayeux cemetery who died liberating us.”
Macron himself also wanted the loan to go ahead. “Especially since Brexit, he is absolutely convinced of the essential importance of joint cultural projects between France and Great Britain,” says one presidential adviser, adding that Macron discussed it several times with King Charles and successive British prime ministers.
At a press conference at the British Museum in July, Macron barely concealed his glee at having overcome the doubts of some in the cultural establishment.
“We found the best experts of the world to explain in perfect detail why it was impossible to make such a loan,” he said. “And believe me, we could have found them again.”
“But we just decided a few years ago, and I have to pay tribute to your king because it was a discussion together and I saw his attachment, his willingness, towards this project.”
This is not the first time that a French president has overruled art experts to use the nation’s cultural icons for diplomatic ends. Despite opposition from curators, General Charles de Gaulle loaned the “Mona Lisa”, the Louvre’s greatest treasure, to the US in 1963.
Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece was seen by more than a million people as it hung in Washington and New York, and de Gaulle’s decision is now regarded as a turning point in the use of culture as a soft power tool.
Britain rejoiced at the Bayeux announcement while France only seemed to muster a Gallic shrug. The tapestry has always been dearer to the hearts of the British than the French, although school children in both countries are trooped to Bayeux to see it.
For Macron and British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer — and the Conqueror’s successor King Charles — the prospect of the Bayeux Tapestry “coming home” is a powerful reminder that the ties that bind the two countries remain stronger than the post-Brexit pressures that drove them apart.
“It’s a brilliant initiative,” Starmer said at the announcement of the loan at the British Museum last month. “Everybody is walking around here with a smile on their face.”
