Inbox: The Bayeux Tapestry and the Arrow Nobody Can Prove | Sue Brunning
Legacy
The episode explores the historic return of the Bayeux Tapestry to England for a major exhibition at the British Museum. Hosts Peter Frankop
Key takeaways
- The Bayeux Tapestry is actually an embroidery on linen with wool thread, not a woven tapestry.
- The artwork likely depicts the events leading to the Norman Conquest of 1066.
Main topics
- Bayeux Tapestry exhibition
- Norman Conquest history
Notable quotes
It's not a tapestry. It's an embroidery.
Conclusion
A fascinating look at how visual art shapes our historical understandi
Transcript preview
Speaker 2 (0:00) What does it take to push bold ideas forward? Build new ways of working. And how can businesses help solve society's biggest challenges? Take on Tomorrow is back with a brand new season. Join us as we meet innovators and experts from around the world to discover the secret to building momentum. Visit pwc.com slash take on tomorrow or wherever you listen to podcasts for season five. Speaker 1 (0:33) 68 metres of linen, embroidered in wool sometime in the 1070s. It is the most famous picture of the most famous year in English history. And it's just come back to Britain for the first time in nearly a thousand years. Speaker 3 (0:48) And almost everything you think you know about it is actually up for debate, starting with the name. We call it the Bayer Tapestry, but it isn't a tapestry. Speaker 1 (1:00) And there's that arrow in Harold's eye that everybody thinks they know about. That might have been stitched quite recently by somebody in the Victorian era. Speaker 3 (1:09) Sue Brunning is one of the curators who brought it to the British Museum. And she's also the keeper of the Sutton Hoo treasures that have gone to France in exchange. Six women in 68 metres, three of them naked, a scene with a woman, a cleric and a slap nobody can explain. A very... wayward penis and a battle sequence so brutal that visitors actually come out shaken. I Speaker 1 (1:35) love it. A wayward penis rather than just one that's in the right place at the right time. But I like it. There's so much we talk about with Sue. It's a real treat to have her on. The tickets for the Bear Tablet Street have gone like hotcakes. They're going to expect a million people at the British Museum before the 11th of July. So getting Sue to come and talk about... the tapestry or the embroidery to talk about what it stands for, how important it is. It's a real treat. So here you go. We're going to be talking today about the Bayeux tapestry. Speaker 3 (2:06) Hello and welcome to Legacy Inbox. Speaker 1 (2:09) I'm Peter Frankenman. Speaker 3 (2:10) I'm Afua Hash. Speaker 1 (2:11) And this is where we step away from the main series and open up our inbox. Speaker 3 (2:15) Somewhere we've been, something we've been working on, someone we want you to meet. Speaker 1 (2:20) Or something we just can't ignore. And if you've been in London at any point in September of 2026, you'll see the Bay of Tapestry everywhere in the newspapers, on adverts in the tube and people talking about it. Speaker 3 (2:31) You'll also see Peter just casually hanging out with the king, Emmanuel Macron, talking about seeing something that hasn't been in the country for a thousand years. I mean, it's epic in every way. Speaker 1 (2:42) So Speaker 3 (2:42) we couldn't resist bringing you an episode on the Bayer tapestries back in England. We are talking with the curator who helped get it here. And Legacy Inbox is so much better when you're in it. If there's something you want us to look at, DM us at Original Legacy Podcast on Instagram. Speaker 1 (2:58) And if you want more of us than maybe is good for you or you love us, and we know that a lot of you do, there's Legacy Plus. So please come and sign up at legacy.supportingcast.fm. You'll get bonus episodes, Q &A. You'll be able to binge series before anybody else gets them. And we've been working really hard over the last few months to think about not just the topics, but to get some amazing guests to come on. So Sue Brunning is with us today on Legacy. But come and join us and be part of the Legacy family if you go to legacy.supportingcast.fm. Speaker 1 (3:31) Sue, it's so lovely to see you. A friend of mine and one of the most talked about people in Europe at the moment because of the Bayeux Tapestry, a blockbuster show. I mean, you must be on Cloud9 seeing the reactions to your new exhibition. Speaker 4 (3:49) It's quite surreal to see a piece of medieval art really hitting the zeitgeist in the way that it has and sort of being all over social media, all over the news. The one thing that everybody's talking about. It's quite surreal when you work on these things throughout your career and then you see it just taking over is quite something to behold. Speaker 1 (4:06) And tell us about how this... I mean, I was there, I heard Mack Rourke say this, that the chatter had been since 2017. If I'm not mistaken, the chatter's been since the 12th century about bringing it back. So it's been a bit longer than that. But how did this magnificent artwork come to the British Museum? Speaker 4 (4:24) Yeah, well, it's been something that has been sort of mooted for quite a while, as you've mentioned. I think the first sort of really serious possibility that it might happen was back in 2013 when the scientific committee at the Bayer Museum was set up. because they knew that they were going to be closing the museum for refurbishment and for the building of a new wing. And my colleague Michael Lewis was part of that scientific committee. And I think he was quite keen at the time of exploring the possibility of a loan of the tapestry to the UK while the Bayer Museum was closed. And then I think the next kind of milestone really was in 2018, when Macron said that this was something that he wanted to see happen at this summit with... Theresa May in Sandhurst. But then it kind of went a bit quiet for a while. There was a bit of discussion at the museum amongst myself and my colleagues about, you know, if it was to come to the museum, what are the sorts of things we might like to do with it? But then it did sort of go quiet for a while. And I think obviously the pandemic intervened and that was a big thing that kind of just brought the world really to a bit of a stop. But then of course it came back in 2025 when it was announced that this was actually going to happen. And at that point, really everybody here at the museum just was all hands on deck to bring this to a sort of a conclusion, which has now happened with the tapestry opened here with the exhibition. So it's been just over a year, which is very short for an exhibition at the museum. As you know, I worked on the Silk Roads exhibition last time, which was six years in the making. So yes, it's been very quick. Yeah, it's been a whirlwind experience of excitement as Speaker 1 (6:01) well. Speaker 4 (6:01) Tell us a Speaker 1 (6:02) bit about the politics behind this exhibition, Silk Road's the same. When you're borrowing things that are national treasures, I mean, the case of Silk Road is that Uzbekistan needs to change its law to be able to get some of the objects out to you. Do you as a curatorial team get involved in some of those things? Do you have to smile and promise you're not going to break things? I mean, how does the diplomatics behind these loans work? And what does that look like? Speaker 4 (6:25) Yeah, well, those sorts of discussions are obviously held at quite a high level, particularly with something of this magnitude. But we do get involved in some of these discussions and some of the practical side of things as well. As you may know, in exchange for the Bayeux Tapestry, the British Museum is sending material from the Sutton Hoo ship burial, which is, of course, part of my curatorial purview. So I've been involved on that Speaker 1 (6:47) side. One Speaker 4 (6:47) of your gems. You're going to be missing that. Speaker 1 (6:50) We'll Speaker 4 (6:50) be missing it, but I'm sure Bayeux are also missing the Bayeux tapestry. So I think it's a really wonderful opportunity for people on both sides of the channel to experience some of the foremost early medieval treasures in each other's collections to bring them to new audiences. And I think particularly with something like Sutton Hoo, it does have connections to France. The coins in the burial are from France and some believe that the style of the Great Gold Buckle, one of the... most famous things in the burial, has sort of cultural connections with material culture in France. So it really is a wonderful cultural exchange of these very high profile treasures and a really important moment, I think. For Speaker 3 (7:31) people who don't know, could you just tell us a little bit about Sutton Hoo and why it's important? Speaker 4 (7:36) Yeah, so the Sutton Hoo ship burial is an early 7th century... burial from Sutton Hoo, which is in Suffolk in eastern England. And the quality and the quantity of the burial goods inside this burial, which is actually inside a 27-metre long ship, so very spectacular, suggests to us that somebody very important was buried there. And the consensus is this is likely to have been a king of the local kingdom of East Anglia at this time. So it's a very early royal burial, perhaps one of the only royal burials that we have in England, although there are also other very high profile burials. They're normally termed princely burials, but this one is of such a kind of... high status that it has been termed a ship burial. So it really is one of these kind of foundational treasures of England, really. And I think that's why it's quite a good kind of exchange for the Bayeux Tapestry. I Speaker 1 (8:27) should probably ask you to just explain what the Bayeux Tapestry is, given it's not actually a tapestry. I Speaker 4 (8:32) wanted Speaker 1 (8:32) to come in as the Speaker 3 (8:33) idiot in the conversation. Speaker 1 (8:36) The medievalists were like hairs that will start running and never stop. Sorry. And Speaker 3 (8:39) really, I think, what is the Bayeux Tapestry and why? Because I know that this is is basically its first return to England in a thousand years. Why is that such Speaker 4 (8:50) a big deal? Yeah, exactly. The first thing to say is that it's not a tapestry. It's an embroidery, which is always a good kind of pub quiz answer, I think. And the difference is essentially that an embroidery is, well... embroideries that are embroidered onto a backing fabric. So in the case of the Bayeux Tapestry, it's a linen backing ground and then the embroideries are made with wool dyed with various plant dyes to create this lovely palette that we see on the tapestry. Whereas the tapestry is sort of the imagery is all woven into it. So the imagery is kind of integral to the weaving, so to speak. It's all kind of done like that. But nonetheless, the name tapestry has stuck because the French word tapisserie, which means a sort of a textile hanging of any kind, has been translated as tapestry and it's sort of stuck. So you will still see it being called tapestry, although some people will call it the Bayer embroidery. The reason that it's sort of so important, I think the fact that it's now in England for this exhibition, part of the reason is that we think it