The Bayeux Tapestry Explained: Watch an Animated Retelling of the Norman Conquest

The Bayeux Tapestry Explained: Watch an Animated Retelling of the Norman Conquest Every time the World Cup comes around, or at least since England first and last won it 60 years ago, there’s talk of whether it’ll be brought “back home.” The idea being, of course, that football (or soccer, as it’s called in a couple of the countries hosting this year’s matches) was made in England. However the showdown with Norway goes this Sunday, and indeed how the rest of the World Cup plays out during the week thereafter, something much older — and of much less debatable origins — will be returned to Blighty: the Bayeux Tapestry, which has been kept in the eponymous Normandy town since at least the fourteen-seventies, and most likely centuries earlier than that. This sizable and intricate piece of embroidered fabric depicts the events leading up to the Battle of Hastings in 1066, the decisive event of the Norman Conquest of England. Legible today as a kind of “medieval comic strip,” as the n