The British Museum will display the Bayeux Tapestry for a major exhibition from September 2026 until June 2027. It will coincide with the 960th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings, which took place on 14th October 1066.
During its removal and display, the tapestry will be insured by the British taxpayer for £800 million.
French experts have expressed fears about potential damage. The main cause of damage is likely to be vibration. All vibrations must be restricted to below two millimetres per second.
The French are assembling a ‘crack’ team to carry out a test transportation using a crate with a fully monitored mock tapestry, equipped with vibration-analysis sensors.
All this is in stark contrast to what happened some 80 years ago.
Soon after Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, the tapestry, which was housed in the Hôtel du Doyen, Bayeux, was packed up into a crate with a sprinkling of mothballs and placed into a cellar.
France fell in 1940 and a squabble broke out between Goering, Goebbels and Himmler about who should take possession of the tapestry.
Himmler won. Seeing its propaganda value, he ordered his Ahnenerbe (ancestral heritage) unit to find evidence in the tapestry of its Aryan character. The Normans were, after all, Norsemen and the last invaders of Great Britain.
By 1941, it was decided to move the artwork to Germany. The first step was to take it 100 miles to the Louvre’s safe house at Château de Sourches, near Le Mans. And at this point the story descends into something like an episode of ’Allo ’Allo!
It fell to the Mayor of Bayeux, Monsieur Dodeman, to organise the move. Petrol was rationed – so the only vehicle at his disposal was a camionnette à gazogène. This peculiar truck was powered by a furnace which super-heated charcoal, releasing carbon-monoxide gas to power the engine.
The huge cylinder just behind the cab was an oven. Only about ten horsepower could be provided to the engine. The truck was owned by a Monsieur Delahaye. On the morning of 19th August, he took two hours just to start the vehicle. The chest containing the cloth and its special winder were loaded into the back, along with a dozen bags of charcoal.
The escort party consisted of Monsieur Cervotti, the prefect of police, and Monsieur Falue, the official keeper of the tapestry.
For health and safety reasons, the latter insisted on travelling with a fire extinguisher – not that this would have been in any way effective against the burner’s exploding.
After a couple of hours rattling along, they reached Flers and decided to stop for lunch (they were French!). When it came to getting back on the road after lunch, the engine refused to start. Delahaye got out his tool kit.
After half an hour of tinkering, there was a large puff of smoke, leaving the owner with a blackened face and the engine spluttering into life.
The two custodians climbed aboard – but when they reached the first hill outside the town, the engine wavered.
Scared that it would die, the two men jumped out and started to push. When they passed the summit, the vehicle came back to life and shot off downhill. Cervotti and Falue chased on foot, catching up again on level ground, only to have to repeat the exercise at the next hill – and the next. It took ten hours to cover the 100 miles to Sourches.
Having learnt from their mistakes, they did not turn off the engine. They rapidly unloaded their cargo into the care of the Louvre experts and headed home – to avoid the Germans’ strict 10pm curfew.
Towards the end of the war, after D-Day, the tapestry was moved to the Louvre in Paris. Himmler wanted it back in Germany to decorate his Arthurian-inspired castle at Wewelsburg.
On 18th August, the British decoded an intercepted message from Himmler to Stindt, the head of the Gestapo in Paris, ordering him immediately to remove the tapestry to a safe place.
Two SS men were dispatched to see the Nazi commander General Dietrich von Choltitz, who informed them (incorrectly) that the Louvre was already in the hands of the resistance and he couldn’t protect them. Paris was liberated a few days later.
After a brief showing in Paris, the tapestry was returned to Bayeux in March 1945 and re-displayed – safe and sound – at the Hôtel du Doyen in October that year.
Dr Will Bowen is a genius elf on QI, the TV series
