Reading’s Bayeux Tapestry

https://diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/2026/09/readings-bayeux-tapestry.html

Comments

bergieSep 27, 2026, 3:32 AM
That fanfic ending of the Bayeux Tapestry in Reading is an obvious Victorian fabrication. The original depicts the c-base space station crashing on earth. It can be viewed in Berlin:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/bergie/46619220061/

jibaltSep 28, 2026, 6:18 AM
I saw the Bayeux tapestry in Bayeux in 1997. For 7 francs I got a 20 minute film that played alternately in English and French, as much time as I wanted to study a canvas replica, and a quickly moving line past the real thing behind plexiglass, wearing headphones that explained it that were coded for language with colored dots. Great experience. I was on a 6 week solo bike ride, and just before Bayeux I had been at the D-Day beaches 6 miles away ... another war almost 900 years later. And a few days earlier I had been on the mud flats at Mont St. Michel, the same ones that the tapestry (more of an embroidery) showed Harold rescuing a couple of soldiers from.
canistelSep 27, 2026, 2:11 AM
As an aside, I see that this blog has been around from early 2000s, and has been regularly updated, almost every day. Quite fascinating...
dtgriscomSep 27, 2026, 12:28 AM
I saw this. It was done by Victorian embroiderers, and was amazing, but the part I remember is one of the incidental characters. In the original, he was quite conspicuously nude; in the reproduction he was given a pair of shorts.
jibaltSep 28, 2026, 6:24 AM
Victorian embroiderers in 1088 when Odo, the Archbishop of Bayeux and half brother of William the Baster/Conqueror, commissioned it to have it hung in the cathedral?

The tale was that it had been created by Queen Mathilde and her ladies in waiting, which of course was not true ... it was made by professional embroiderers, but long before the reign of Queen Victoria.

When Odo fell out of favor with William, the tapestry was folded and stored in a cedar box, opened each year for inventory. This is why it is so well preserved ... as opposed, for instance, to the massive Apocalypse Tapestry in Anjou that was used to protect orange orchards from frost.

> in the reproduction

The original is visible behind plexiglass in Bayeux. There is also a canvas reproduction -- I saw it in 1997 and don't recall whether it was bowdlerized.

topherclaySep 27, 2026, 3:12 AM
Yup, the article has images behind hyperlinks if you want to see him naked. Just Ctrl+f: "the original design with everything hanging out. "
zeristorSep 27, 2026, 6:05 AM
The Bayeux Tapestry - all of it, from start to finish

https://youtube.com/watch?v=KnieUa2-22o

SuppaflySep 28, 2026, 1:14 AM
What's up with the internet's sudden obsession with the Bayeux Tapestry? I've seen so many posts lately here and on reddit and other places.
boomboomsubbanSep 28, 2026, 6:28 AM
It's on loan to the British Museum, so is on Britain for the first time in nearly a millennium.
serfSep 28, 2026, 1:47 AM
it was recently moved.

it was a tremendously technical and expensive feat.

nephihahaSep 27, 2026, 7:50 AM
Someone should do a graphic novel version of the Bayeux tapestry based heavily on the original.