There is no denying the wonders of the Bayeux tapestry. Seeing the Norman Propaganda in the flesh, rather than on a smartboard in a history lesson, is an arresting experience. You notice, perhaps for the first time, the fables and strange beasts of the lower margins giving way to a brutal carpet of dead bodies – decapitated heads, severed limbs and blood – as the Normans win at Hastings. 

Unfortunately, the British Museum appears to be doing everything in its power to prevent the public from actually looking at it. Most art critics and journalists will have first visited the embroidery at a press evening or media breakfast. Consequently, most reviewers have successfully traversed the ‘Bayeux Tapestry Experience’ without incident. And, crucially, they appear to have been permitted by museum marshals to stop and appreciate the thing. 

I like a good hypocrite

Burnham’s bet: is the Prime Minister planning to call an election?

Sydney Sweeney is no better than Bonnie Blue

The rest of us commoners will have no such luck. If you wish to see the embroidery in London, you must first sit in an online queue for several hours. Then, if you’re lucky, you will be permitted to pay £33 for a ticket (I’m reliably informed that had I simply popped over to Bayeux before the Tapestry came to London then the viewing would have cost me just €12 – with an audio guide thrown in.) 

Upon arrival at the British Museum, things seemed to operate with reassuring........

© The Spectator