French President Emmanuel Macron is expected to loan the Battle Of Hastings tapestry to the UK in 2022. Macron and May will be having an Anglo-French meeting today at Sandhurst. Theresa May is expected to use the announcement of loaning the 950-year-old tapestry to highlight the UK's historical relationship with France and the wider European continent.
Hartwig Fischer speaking for the British Museum said he would be "honoured and delighted" to receive the tapestry depicting perhaps the greatest event in British history.
The tapestry on display in Bayeux is not the original but is a copy.
The tapestry tells the story of when William of Normandy and Harold of England battled at Hastings in 1066 for the English throne. The tapestry is the stitchwork of English peasants some years after the Norman victory and was put together in Canterbury.
Moving the original tapestry given the fact of its age would have to be a delicate task.
Macron: Smooth Operator
Emmanuel Macron is becoming quite a canny operator on the world stage having entertained Donald Trump recently as well other world leaders. Right now with German Chancellor Angela Merkle trying to cobble together a coalition government Macron has seized the initiative and become the de facto speaker for Europe.
France is the second largest economy in Europe after Germany and France is still a formidable power on the military scene too. So given all this why wouldn't Macron a young politician trying to make his mark globally do just that? With the announcement of the lending of the Bayeux Tapestry to the UK Macron has been compared to William the Conqueror and Napoleon Bonaparte. Historians love to compare current leaders with leaders past and with Macron it's understandable to see why.
William of Normandy and Napoleon made their mark on French and European history. Macron is not a military leader per se but like the above named historical figures, he is a highly intelligent man who it seems is not afraid to take risks.
Macron straddles the politics of both moderate left and right and seems to be the right man for this moment in time again like William and Napoleon.
Normans: Not French?
Some historians like to paint the Battle of Hastings as a struggle between The French and the English. One can see why they would do this as the historical relationship between us and the French have been a love-hate one. Not unlike our relationship with Germany and other countries in Europe.
However, at the time of the Saxon-Norman scuffle in 1066 France as a nation did not technically exist. The king ruled over a small territory around Paris. The rest of what would be France was a patchwork quilt of different feuding states.
Such was the way in feudal Europe for many nations with England itself only being made a nation by a previous English king Alfred. The whys, wherefores and all rest of the skullduggery that led up to Hastings will always be argued about.
The Bayeux Tapestry is a Norman take on what happened, after all, the victors always write the history.
The Normans ruled England with an iron fist and oppressed the English both peasantry and aristocrat in many ways.
The Normans were French speakers certainly but the origins of their ancestors were somewhat Scandinavian. To describe the Normans as French Vikings would perhaps be apt.