“Why aren’t woke snowflakes demanding we keep Bayeux Tapestry?”

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That was the arresting headline of a story in the Express recently. The writer argued that, since most scholars believe the Tapestry was created in England, we should negotiate to keep it here permanently after the loan to the British Museum expires next summer.

He wondered why those indulging in the “wringing of hands over colonial era pillaging” and campaigning for the repatriation of treasures like the Benin Bronzes and the Elgin Marbles from the British Museum were hypocritically not applying the same logic to keeping the Bayeux Tapestry here.

The article correctly pointed out that there is a live campaign on the government petition site to “Seek to negotiate with France to permanently keep the Bayeux Tapestry in the UK”. At the time of writing, that petition was backed by 34 signatories.

I fear I out myself as a woke snowflake if I point out that the Bayeux Tapestry is hardly in the same category as the Benin Bronzes and the Elgin Marbles, given that we know nothing about its history until 1476. In that year, an artefact that sounds very much like the Tapestry is recorded in an inventory of Bayeux Cathedral, so we can safely assume it was in Normandy by the later 15th century, and that’s pretty much where it’s stayed, barring a couple of incidents with Napoleon and the Nazis, until its trip to London this year.

Yes, most people who’ve studied it conclude it was likely made in southern England, and the embroidery was probably stitched by Anglo-Saxon........

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