Unruly: The Ridiculous History of England's Kings and Queens

by David Mitchell

It’s impossible to know how the battle played out because it happened a long time ago and nobody videoed it. Someone tapestried it, though. Most of our sense of how it went comes from that massive tapestry. The Bayeux tapestry: you may have heard of it. If you’ve only heard of one tapestry, it’ll be that one. If you’ve heard of two, I don’t know what the other one will be because personally I’ve only heard of one. I haven’t really even heard of one, because the Bayeux tapestry is, strictly speaking, an embroidery. I know. Why is it called a tapestry if it’s not a tapestry? Why, for that matter, has the fact that it’s the most famous object on earth to be referred to as a tapestry not resulted in the definition of the word ‘tapestry’ being widened to include it? I thought the English language was supposed to be governed by usage rather than arbitrary rules of the kind that have long hobbled French. But then it is a French tapestry. Except it isn’t, despite its location and the other part of its name. It’s English. It’s not a French tapestry, it’s an English embroidery. It was commissioned by the victorious Normans, but they didn’t have the skill base to commemorate their triumph in needlework, so it was made in England by English women. Another example of how disasters can boost GDP.