The last time King Charles III of Britain saw the Bayeux Tapestry, in September 1987, he had to travel to its home in northern France. Accompanied by Diana, Princess of Wales, the then prince marveled at the over 900-year-old embroidery depicting William the Conqueror’s invasion of England in 1066, and he impressed local residents with a brief speech in French about its impact.
On Wednesday evening, almost 40 years later, Charles got to view the tapestry in notably different circumstances — now as king, just like the tapestry’s main characters, and this time without having to leave his home soil. Instead, he went to the British Museum in London, accompanied by Queen Camilla, to witness the tapestry’s return to Britain for the first time since it was made.
The tapestry is not just a historic artifact, but a personal reminder of “what I like to think of as the French side of my family’s history,” Charles joked during an eight-minute speech at the museum. He also spoke of his joy at seeing the 220-foot-long embroidery in London, where it is the focus of a blockbuster exhibition set to open on Sept. 10.
“The tapestry’s story is one of ambition and uncertainty, of oaths and journeys, of ships, councils, kings, comets and consequences,” Charles said, calling it “70 meters of memory and artistry.”
The British Museum hopes that attendance for the show, which runs through July 11, will rival the 1.6 million visitors who flocked to its “Treasures of Tutankhamen” exhibition in 1972.
Before the speeches, British Museum curators had walked Charles along the tapestry and pointed out key scenes, including one showing the coronation of Harold Godwinson, England’s last Anglo-Saxon monarch, and another depicting Godwinson’s death at the Battle of Hastings. In that scene, the dying monarch clasps an arrow that has thwacked his eye.
Although the tapestry shows a time of conflict between France and England, Wednesday’s event was a sedate affair, bringing together President Emmanuel Macron of France and Prime Minister Andy Burnham of Britain and their wives, alongside Charles and Camilla.
The tapestry recounts a conflict, Charles said during his speech, “yet here it is today, nearly 1,000 years later, as a precious symbol of trust at a time when trust seems sadly to be in short supply between nations.”
Macron also spoke at the museum, saying how the Norman invasion depicted in the tapestry “was just the start” of events that have entwined Britain and France, including “marriages, alliances, inheritances and successions” as well as shared cultural artifacts.
The tapestry’s reappearance in Britain was a long time coming. Embroidered in the 11th century, most likely in Canterbury, England, it was later moved to Bayeux, France, where it eventually was listed in a 1476 inventory of the town’s cathedral.
Over the past 70 years, British officials have repeatedly tried to borrow the artwork — including for the coronation of Elizabeth II, Charles’s mother — but French art experts insisted that it was too fragile to travel.
That situation changed in 2018, when Macron announced that France had agreed to lend the tapestry to Britain as a gesture of friendship between the two nations. The loan has been able to go ahead thanks to techniques developed by conservation experts to ensure that the tapestry could travel to London.
Last year, Macron said in a speech at the British Museum that Charles had been a key figure behind the scenes encouraging the project.
Charles has long been a supporter of arts and culture, and as a prince, he often discussed his love of traditional art and architecture in interviews. In 2004, he co-founded an academy for traditional arts, whose short courses include training in weaving and embroidery. And his foundation, in collaboration with Chanel, runs specialist embroidery courses aimed at students who want to work in high-end ateliers.
The royal has also added stitches to several artworks inspired by the tapestry. In 2000, he sewed the final stitch for the New World Tapestry, an attempt to depict British colonialism in the Americas that has since been accused of perpetuating racist stereotypes.
In 2012, on a visit to Alderney, one of the Channel Islands, Charles contributed a few stitches to a work of embroidery that aims to continue the Bayeux Tapestry’s story beyond its current end point depicting William the Conqueror’s successful invasion of England.
Kate Russell, a founder of that tapestry project, said in an interview that during his visit Charles urged people to go and see the original tapestry in Bayeux. She also said it was obvious why he would love the tapestry given the story it relays: “You can’t be a member of the English royal family and not have a sense of the ties to those events.”
Toward the end of Charles’s speech on Wednesday, the king switched into French and pointed out that the tapestry’s final scenes were missing. (They were likely worn away over time.)
“It falls to each generation to add its own stitch to the fabric of our shared history,” Charles said, “from this evening and into many generations to come.”
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