The debate over the true intent of the Bayeux Tapestry has been so divisive among historians that it has been compared to the battle depicted by the embroidery.
On one side are the English-speaking academics, convinced that the pictorial account of William the Conqueror’s victory was to hang in the house of a Norman nobleman.
Most French historians prefer the notion that it was always destined for Bayeux Cathedral, built by William’s half-brother Odo and where the work has hung since the 15th century.
A British academic, however, claims to have found the exact hanging space for which the embroidery was designed, putting all argument to rest. His “unambiguous conclusion” may feel to his British peers like an arrow in the eye.
Christopher Norton, a