For a certain kind of amateur historian there is a moment, fixed in the imagination, endlessly revisited: it is still not yet late on that bright October afternoon in 1066, the shield-wall locked and braced, the hill still theirs, the horses floundering on the slope below, Harold upright, the sun sinking but not yet gone, the field not yet lost. You can stop it there if you wish: it is all still possible, still unspoiled, the arrow not yet loosed, the shadow not yet crossing the light. England unbroken, the language uncorrupted. All of it, still possible. And then – a shadow descends from the blue sky.

Nearly a millennium later, the Normans are back in the spotlight. The BBC’s King & Conqueror, airing today, promises a Game of Thrones-style Hastings, with James Norton as Harold and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as William. But why does England keep returning to that October afternoon, to the moment Harold fell?

For centuries the conquest has been told as disaster: the English broken on a hill, their ancient liberties snuffed out in the dusk. But that story only holds if you believe there was ever a native England to betray

At a reception this month to mark the Bayeux Tapestry’s forthcoming loan to the British Museum, Norton assured Emmanuel Macron that the Normans would be given a fair hearing. That an actor should feel obliged to placate a president about a battle fought in 1066 says everything about how contested the battle and its aftermath still is.

For centuries the conquest has been told as disaster: the English broken on a hill, their ancient liberties snuffed out in the dusk. But that story only holds if you believe there was ever a native England to betray. In truth the Normans were no more foreign than the........

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