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Summary
What is a sacred oath?
Language dipped in gold?
Letters carved in cathedral stone?
The alphabet carried on the breath of God?
The Bayeux Tapestry is world-famous, yet the story behind it is less familiar. Almost a thousand years after the artefact’s creation, Poet Laureate Simon Armitage translates its graphic depictions into lyrical language, vividly exploring the dramatic events leading to the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. The sections are presented through the perspectives of the two main protagonists, Harold Godwinson, Earl of Wessex, and William, Duke of Normandy – from Harold’s hasty presumption of the throne of England to the ‘human avalanche’ planned in response by William. Incidents on both sides of the Channel come to a bloody conclusion at the infamous Battle of Hastings, where nothing less than the future of a country is at stake.
Armitage’s urgent and imaginative verse allows us to experience these historical scenes with a contemporary freshness, as if we could hear the inner thoughts of the warring rivals. The story of the Bayeux Tapestry comes alive in these pages.
The Bayeux Tapestry is a limited-run pamphlet.
SimonArmitage
Simon Armitage was born in West Yorkshire and is Professor of Poetry at the University of Leeds. His collections, which have received numerous prizes and awards, include Seeing Stars (2010), The Unaccompanied (2017), Sandettie Light Vessel Automatic (2019), Magnetic Field (2020), Blossomise (2024) and his acclaimed translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (2007). He writes extensively for television…
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