At the Conservative party conference in Birmingham, the Tories have mounted an 88-foot, AI-assisted parody of the Bayeux Tapestry, accompanied by a mock museum display of political relics. Among them are a pair of spectacles purporting to belong to Keir Starmer and a set of handcuffs labelled for Peter Mandelson. Vision and restraint are not qualities one usually associates with a party conference, but here they are at last, displayed together.

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I should probably admit that I have not seen it in person. This does not seem to put me at much of a disadvantage. Jeremy Clarkson observed that the conference audience had come disguised as empty chairs, and I have reconstructed the tapestry from photographs, reports and the testimony of those who did make it into the room. This is, I suppose, how most medievalists work.

The real Bayeux Tapestry is currently rather harder to see. Public tickets for its British Museum exhibition disappeared amid online queues reportedly lasting nine hours. Peter Thiel managed a private viewing, although founding Palantir seems an........

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