SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
In England, students memorize one date above all else, 1066, the year of the Norman Conquest, an epic invasion by France. The oldest depiction of that history is on a tapestry that's normally in a small French museum. But this year, it's journeyed to London. And tomorrow, it goes on public display there for the first time in more than 900 years. NPR's Lauren Frayer got a sneak peek.
LAUREN FRAYER, BYLINE: 1066 is everywhere. People joke it's the country's most used pin number. It's on TV commercials for car insurance.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: 0-800-00-1066, or visit our website.
FRAYER: 1066 was the Battle of Hastings, which The British Museum calls...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: The battle that decides who becomes king, marking the dawn of the Norman era.
FRAYER: When William the Conqueror led a Norman army to kill the Anglo-Saxon King Harold with an arrow through his eye. It's celebrated in one of the oldest pieces of war propaganda, a giant comic strip embroidered on linen depicting the Norman Conquest in bright colors. It's a few feet high and nearly 230 feet long. That's longer than a 747. It was commissioned by the victors.
GALE OWEN-CROCKER: So let's have a bigger one than anyone's had before. It was the Norman eyes.
FRAYER: Historian Gale Owen-Crocker says the tapestry was commissioned by William's half-brother, the Bishop of Bayeux in Normandy, France. And that's where it's been for more than 900 years. But its intricate scenes of horsemen in battle, royal banquets and mythical beasts were actually stitched on the losing side in England.
OWEN-CROCKER: Every thread passed between some woman's finger and thumb.
FRAYER: Probably by seamstress nuns, who snuck in subversive insults, Owen-Crocker says.
OWEN-CROCKER: On the face of it, it's bluntly telling the story the way the Norman historians did. But if you look at which images depict William and his half-brother, Bishop, they tend to be biblical villains.
FRAYER: And that's one reason Brits love this tapestry. Another is that their modern-day monarch descends from this battle. King Charles, when he saw it, said...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KING CHARLES III: It also tells the story of the beginning of what I like to think of as the French side of my family's history in these islands.
FRAYER: After years of diplomacy, last year, French President Emmanuel Macron announced...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT EMMANUEL MACRON: France will loan the United Kingdom the Bayeux Tapestry.
(APPLAUSE)
FRAYER: But it was quite a feat to get it here. It's a nearly 1,000-year-old piece of cloth that almost met its demise as a wagon covering in the French Revolution. It survived Napoleon, the Nazis and plunder by the common clothes moth while folded for centuries in storage.
MILLIE HORTON-INSCH: It's got a checkered conservation history, to put it mildly. And less than a hundred years ago, the Nazis had it rolled up on a bobbin.
FRAYER: Curator Millie Horton-Insch oversaw its transport from France.
HORTON-INSCH: Test runs with a replica. Everything was considered, vibrations, the temperature, the humidity.
FRAYER: In the dead of night, in a refrigerated shock-absorber truck...
HORTON-INSCH: Squishy bits of fabric in between each bit so that it didn't rub against itself.
FRAYER: ...Through a tunnel under the English Channel and finally here to the British Museum.
HORTON-INSCH: When it was first taken out of the case, and Edward the Confessor was sort of waving at you from the 11th century, it was the most incredible feeling in the world.
FRAYER: The museum expects this to be its most popular exhibition ever. Before the crowds, I got a tour.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
FRAYER: It starts with this musical installation. You come down these stairs, and then it's sort of illuminated. Wow.
Walking alongside it, it feels like a medieval action movie.
This is where William the Conqueror's soldiers sink into quicksand. There is a sword through somebody's tummy. They're decapitating someone here. And there he is, King Harold of England, felled.
And through his eye is that arrow that changed this country's history forever. Lauren Frayer, NPR News, London.
(SOUNDBITE OF J DILLA'S "REQUIEM (INSTRUMENTAL)") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
