I have seen the Bayeux tapestry four times since childhood, and loved it on each viewing, for the sheer miracle of its survival and the glorious vividness of its detail. But the fourth time, earlier this week, was different – how could it not be?

Tapestrymania has taken hold in London. The textile has been proffered as a diplomatic symbol, the occasion for crowned heads and presidents to mingle and speechify. And, assuming you agree that it was embroidered in England by Englishwomen’s hands (since many scholars argue it was likely stitched in Canterbury rather than Bayeux, Normandy – the tapestry’s home), it is charged with the potency of return, rather than simply of arrival.

If you want to see the Bayeux tapestry at the British Museum, be alert for the next ticket release in October, be resigned to sitting in a long digital queue and be ready to hand over £33. Or, perhaps more realistically, be prepared for disappointment. Viewing times are restricted to protect its delicate fibres from damage, so they can’t simply be extended beyond normal hours. Demand will outstrip supply.

We see celebrated artworks through the lens of our own historical moment, our own biography. Encountering the tapestry again this week, in a time of war, it seemed impossible to observe the violence of the battles it depicts without a cold dread: the decapitated trunks, the horses clashing and tumbling, the looters stripping the killed of their arms and armour. But what really struck me was how legible the artwork is. Across nearly 1,000 years, its narrative clarity is such that, in its temporary gallery, you barely need to glance up at the British Museum’s animated interpretation. All it asks of you is to look, and the story will lay itself out generously before you.

As a child, on a........

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