A London political theorist reads about Bayeux Tapestry fever and recognises in a nine-hundred-year-old embroidery the oldest piece of political communications in Europe
Thursday, 15 October 2026. The British Library cafe on the Euston Road, a pot of tea, a stack of library books about the Normans I have no professional reason to have borrowed, rain on the courtyard, 1.20pm.
A Very Long Press Release
There are few things that excite a political theorist more than propaganda, and I say that as a woman who once spent a whole sabbatical reading wartime ministry leaflets. So when the London Prat published its report on Bayeux Tapestry fever, I abandoned my marking, took the Northern line to King’s Cross and sat in the British Library cafe surrounded by books about 1066, like a woman preparing for a pub quiz that exists only in her head.
The Bayeux Tapestry is, of course, not strictly a tapestry. It is an embroidery, nearly seventy metres long, telling the story of the Norman Conquest from the Norman point of view. Political scientists, if they are honest, will tell you that it is the finest piece of government communications ever produced in Europe. It has a clear message, a strong narrative, memorable images, a villain, a hero and a happy ending, at least for the side that commissioned it. No modern press office has done better.
The Spin Of 1066
The story the tapestry tells is essentially a justification. Harold swears an oath to William, breaks it, takes the crown and is punished. The message is that the Conquest was not an invasion but the enforcement of a promise. Anyone who has worked in Westminster will recognise the technique. You do not say you took power. You say you were honouring a commitment. You do not say you invaded. You say you were delivering on a mandate. Every government since has learnt from the Normans, whether or not it has read the embroidery.
I explained this to the man at the next table, who had made the error of asking whether my books were for a course. He was a retired civil servant from the Department for Transport, and he listened with growing horror. Do you mean to say, he said, that Harold’s broken oath is the original U-turn? I said yes. He said that in forty years at the department, he had personally drafted at least six U-turns and had never once thought to commission an embroidery. I said it was not too late. He said his wife had a sewing machine.
Who Gets The Credit
Any time a great cultural object comes to Britain, the political class immediately begins arguing about who deserves credit. Ministers want photographs. Museum directors want funding. Opposition spokesmen want to say it should have happened sooner. Somebody inevitably suggests that it represents a triumph of British diplomacy, and somebody else points out that it is French. If the Normans could see the arguments, they would recognise them at once. The battle for the narrative never ends. Only the costumes change.
My own proposal, which I sent to my department’s head in an email she has not answered, is that Westminster commissions its own tapestry to record the events of the past decade. It would need to be very long, perhaps several kilometres. It would show Prime Ministers arriving and departing at speed, leaders giving speeches in the rain, a lettuce outlasting a premiership and a series of men in hard hats pointing at things. It would require so many embroiderers that it would solve unemployment in at least three regions. The Treasury could call it levelling up with thread.
The Comet
My favourite scene in the tapestry shows Halley’s Comet passing overhead while Harold’s court looks up in alarm. In 1066, a comet was an omen. In modern British politics, the equivalent is an opinion poll. Every government watches the sky with the same anxiety. If the poll is bad, the court panics. If the poll is very bad, a Harold somewhere is about to get an arrow in the eye. Political historians have debated whether that arrow was real. Political journalists have no such doubts. They have watched it happen to several Prime Ministers in one decade.
A Lesson For My Students
Next week I will use the tapestry in my seminar on political communication. I will show my students the scenes, ask them to identify the message, the audience and the techniques, and then ask them to find modern equivalents. I expect them to compare it to a campaign video. I expect at least one of them to compare William to a tech billionaire. I expect another to say that Harold was cancelled. I will give extra marks to anyone who notices that the tapestry has Latin captions and almost no women, which is also an accurate summary of most Cabinet meetings until fairly recently.
Closing Notes
The cafe is filling with researchers carrying laptops, and the retired civil servant has gone home, he says, to discuss embroidery with his wife. My tea is cold and my marking remains unmarked. Hobbes the cat, who is at home, has no doubt knocked something over, as is his tradition. But I feel, for the first time this term, a genuine sense of intellectual joy. A piece of cloth made nine centuries ago still explains how power talks about itself. I write about this at Dr Caitlin B. Moran’s diary at the London Prat more often than is healthy. Somewhere in Westminster, a minister is about to give a speech justifying something. I hope he knows he is following the oldest script in Europe. I hope someone sews it.
