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Decoding the Bayeux Tapestry: The Secrets of History's Most Famous Embroidery Hidden in Plain Sight
For the first time, a scholar reveals the meaning of the marginal images on the Bayeux Tapestry, unlocking a completely new meaning of the work.
The story of the Norman Conquest and the Battle of Hastings as shown in the Bayeux Tapestry is arguably the most widely-known in the panoply of English history, and over the last 200 years there have been hundreds of books on the Tapestry seeking to analyze its meanings. Yet, there is one aspect of the embroidery that has been virtually ignored or dismissed as unimportant by historians--the details in the margins.
The fables shown in the margins are neither just part of a decorative ribbon, nor are they discontinuous. They follow on in sequence. When this is understood, it becomes clear that they must relate to the action shown on the body of the Tapestry. After careful examination, the purpose of these images is to amplify, elaborate, or explain the main story.
In this groundbreaking study, Arthur Wright reveals the significance of the images in the margins. Now it is possible to see the "whole" story as never before, enabling a more complete picture of the Bayeux Tapestry to be constructed. Wright reexamines many of the scenes in the main body of the work, showing that a number of the basic assumptions, so often taught as facts, have been based on nothing more than reasoned conjecture.
It might be thought that after so much has been written about the Bayeux Tapestry there was nothing more to be said, but Decoding the Bayeux Tapestry shows how much there is still to be learned.
The story of the Norman Conquest and the Battle of Hastings as shown in the Bayeux Tapestry is arguably the most widely-known in the panoply of English history, and over the last 200 years there have been hundreds of books on the Tapestry seeking to analyze its meanings. Yet, there is one aspect of the embroidery that has been virtually ignored or dismissed as unimportant by historians--the details in the margins.
The fables shown in the margins are neither just part of a decorative ribbon, nor are they discontinuous. They follow on in sequence. When this is understood, it becomes clear that they must relate to the action shown on the body of the Tapestry. After careful examination, the purpose of these images is to amplify, elaborate, or explain the main story.
In this groundbreaking study, Arthur Wright reveals the significance of the images in the margins. Now it is possible to see the "whole" story as never before, enabling a more complete picture of the Bayeux Tapestry to be constructed. Wright reexamines many of the scenes in the main body of the work, showing that a number of the basic assumptions, so often taught as facts, have been based on nothing more than reasoned conjecture.
It might be thought that after so much has been written about the Bayeux Tapestry there was nothing more to be said, but Decoding the Bayeux Tapestry shows how much there is still to be learned.
192 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 28, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 20, 2019
I am really in two minds with this read. One the one hand, I liked the fact that it was a study of the Bayeux Tapestry via the marginalia (the images in the top and bottom borders); on the other hand, it left me quite baffled.
Whilst I have read a lot on the tapestry and the period in question, most of what I had read covered off the main, central component - the part that everyone is familiar with - and the various interpretations (ie: Norman POV, English / Anglo Saxon POV). I had not really considered the margins as telling another story - hence my curiosity when this tome was available.
However, the more I read of this book, the more confused I became. I am not a student of symbolism, allegories, fables, and their interpretations, so I really was at a loss to see what the author was seeing. Where I saw colourful critters, the author saw secret messages and conspiracy - and I do love a good conspiracy! I felt like I was in a Dan Brown book and any moment now, Brown's protagonist, Robert Langdon, was going to be drawing lines to the Holy Grail. So for the theory to make sense, one needs to know what the symbolism means from the very get-go. And the multitude of underlying tones leaves all of this open to diverse speculation and interpretation.
Having said that, one question the author posed regarding the tapestry really did intrigue me - what would it have meant at the time? And more to the point, to whom? Who was the intended audience at a time when the vast majority of the population was illiterate. This in itself leads to speculation as to who crafted this embroidery (ie: made it) , who commissioned the piece (ie: suggested it be made and quite possibly set the tone), where is the missing piece, why was it removed, and what image did it contain to warrant its removal. These questions in themselves demand further investigation - and some of the answers put forward by the author do pique one's imagination.
If your interest is deeply focused on this subject, then this book will definitely be of interest.
Whilst I have read a lot on the tapestry and the period in question, most of what I had read covered off the main, central component - the part that everyone is familiar with - and the various interpretations (ie: Norman POV, English / Anglo Saxon POV). I had not really considered the margins as telling another story - hence my curiosity when this tome was available.
However, the more I read of this book, the more confused I became. I am not a student of symbolism, allegories, fables, and their interpretations, so I really was at a loss to see what the author was seeing. Where I saw colourful critters, the author saw secret messages and conspiracy - and I do love a good conspiracy! I felt like I was in a Dan Brown book and any moment now, Brown's protagonist, Robert Langdon, was going to be drawing lines to the Holy Grail. So for the theory to make sense, one needs to know what the symbolism means from the very get-go. And the multitude of underlying tones leaves all of this open to diverse speculation and interpretation.
Having said that, one question the author posed regarding the tapestry really did intrigue me - what would it have meant at the time? And more to the point, to whom? Who was the intended audience at a time when the vast majority of the population was illiterate. This in itself leads to speculation as to who crafted this embroidery (ie: made it) , who commissioned the piece (ie: suggested it be made and quite possibly set the tone), where is the missing piece, why was it removed, and what image did it contain to warrant its removal. These questions in themselves demand further investigation - and some of the answers put forward by the author do pique one's imagination.
If your interest is deeply focused on this subject, then this book will definitely be of interest.
October 11, 2023
I think that this will be my first nonfiction review.
I got onto this book via a Great Courses set on the Medieval World. At the same time I got this book at the library, I also got a lovely, big book filled with close-up photographs of the Tapestry. (OK, it's actually an "Embroidery", but the name isn't going to change any time soon.) The photos were so excellent that I kept thinking that I could reach out and feel the textures. The work is amazing. Also a little weird, with colors apparently tossed in at random (a red animal with a white tail, a horse with multiple colors). In crowded scenes, some of the men's faces are stitched in with dark threads, making them really catch the eye. The big book of photos shows the Tapestry "warts and all", with stains, holes, damaged spots, and repairs clearly to be seen. The Decoding book shows the scenes in glorious bright colors, presumably how it might have looked when brand new. I find his hypothesis that the border art is giving commentary on the big main images fascinating, and I think that it shows fairly good evidence. His ideas on what Harold might possibly have MEANT to do when he landed in Normandy are also interesting.
That having been said, I have to say this: I found this book extremely aggravating. I kept thinking of a line I read in an Elizabeth Peters book: "You are twisting facts to suit a theory, not basing a theory on known facts." He puts a lot of his statements as questions, making it clear that it's opinion and speculation, but there are also places where he authoritatively states his opinions as facts.
One of the problems is that the imagery in the Tapestry, both the main sections and the borders, are up for interpretation. In other words, where you see a po-tay-to, I see a po-tah-to.
Examples: * he makes the flat statement that King Edward is represented as sickly and frail, although no other contemporary references do so. Sorry, but I don't see him as frail in that first scene. He definitely looks comparatively older, but then, he WAS. He looks like he's enjoying himself, too, as though he's about to give a big smile.
* he states that the two fancy birds beneath Edward in the border are "caladrii"--mystical birds that tend to hang around royalty. Problem is, the caladrius is a snow-white bird, no color, and these birds have dark blue (or black) barred wings and crests. Yes, he knows that, but they're still caladrii because if they stitched white birds into the tapestry, they would be take n as ghostly portents, so of course they had to put in some color. Oh, really? I think if you stitched the outline of a bird with dark thread, leaving the white background fabric to do the rest, you would have a proper recognizable white bird. Pale thread for a ghostly bird. In point of fact, there is an all-white bird in the Tapestry. Or perhaps it's pale gold. At any rate, it's all one color. Perhaps a ghost bird? We won't get the answer from Wright, because he ignored it. Perhaps he didn't notice it, being ghostly!
I can imagine a conversation at the first viewing of the Tapestry:
"This is really something. Look, there's old King Edward. What are those fancy white-and blue birds under him?"
"Are you daft, man? Can't you tell those are caladrii?"
"Oh, go on. Everyone knows that a caladrius is a pure white bird. For royalty, don't you know."
"Yeah, but if they had made them white, we might think they were ghosts. So they threw in a bit of color. They knew that we would understand."
"YOU might, I don't. As far as I'm concerned, if it's not white, it must be something else. How about eagles? They look like they could be eagles."
And so on. There are birds that he identifies as flamingos (in 1066 England?) despite the fact that there are other birds with exactly the same shape that are called other things. In the scene where Edward's body is being carried to Westminster, he describes a pard (cat) "prowling and howling" beneath. First off, cats aren't known for throwing their heads back and howling; that's a canine thing. Second, the red body looks distinctly like a fox. In fact, a very good representation of a fox. The tail isn't all that fox-like, but I didn't see any foxes in the Tapestry with the traditional "brush" tail.
In another scene (the one on the cover of the book) he describes the animal down below leaping and seizing a goose as a tiger. (In 1066 England. Yup.) It must be a tiger; it has stripes. Ahh...not the way I see it. In the photo book, where you can see it nice and clear, those spots on the body are...spots. Big, lumpy spots, to be sure, but spots. Not stripes. And the body is clearly a canine shape, as you can see plainly when you compare it with the very next beast, identified as another fox, this one seizing a (presumed) hen. The body shapes are virtually identical; one is just a little larger. And another thing: he interprets the "tiger" as representing a fierce warrior taking down an enemy spy or watchman. The fox next door, who is doing exactly the same thing, is interpreted as "To the victor belong the spoils". Two different interpretations for essentially the same picture.
While we're here, allow me to point out an oddity that I spotted with this scene. If you study the borders, you'll see patterns. They have a set of images that have been interpreted as scenes from Aesop's fables, but a lot of them are simply birds and beasts. And the majority of them seem to come in pairs, with both creatures doing the same thing--looking startled, biting their tails, heads down, heads looking backward, etc. The colors are sometimes different. And with each pair, they either face each other, or they have their backs to each other. Rarely, there will be a four-way set, with bird, beast, beast, then matching bird. In this one single spot, with the two creatures (call them what you will) leaping to snag a bird, they are both leaping in the SAME DIRECTION. They are not facing each other, or back-to-back. This seems trivial, but it really grabbed my attention, and I do think that it's the only place on the Tapestry where this happens. I would like to know if there's some significance there.
Another really irritating point: the book does not contain images of the entire Tapestry. Why the (bleep) not? He is constantly referencing images that the reader cannot look at for him/herself. (Unless, like me, they also have a nice big book of pictures.) Why didn't they make the book just a little longer and include all the images? Maybe collect them in order at the back, in an appendix.
Wright clearly does not admire William the Conqueror (William the Bastard until he became a success, as Richard Armour once pointed out.) He rarely misses an opportunity to point this out. In the thick of the battle scenes, William curiously fades out of the picture. His half-brother, Bishop Odo, is in the center of things, rallying the men and moving forward to the climax. Wright interprets this to mean that William was frightened at this point, scared out of his chauses that he was going to lose the battle, and contemplating fleeing the field and leaving his men behind. (This, by the way, is the same William that we see a few inches away making the supremely courageous and fearfully risky action of removing his helm, so that his men can see that he's still alive--and so can the enemy!) What other explanation can there be? Well, in just a few paragraphs, he himself offers a perfectly good explanation: Wright tends toward the theory that Bishop Odo himself commissioned the Tapestry, and you can be certain that Odo told the designer to make him look good, even at William's expense. (This also explains the scene of the feast, where Odo is presiding and looking remarkably like Jesus at the Last Supper, while William apparently wasn't hungry.)
It is a fact that history is written by the victors. But William did have a good claim to the throne (as did numerous other people) and who is to say at this late date if Edward promised it to him or not, or if Harold pledged it to William (touching those icons!) or not?
There's a spot near the end of the battle where one of the border creatures (looks like a little dog) seems to have gotten himself thrown up into the main body of the tapestry, and he looks like he's frantically trying to crawl back down to the safety of the border again! Wright makes no mention of this. Curious. Surely it meant something? He said that EVERYTHING in the border meant something.
In Harold's death scene, Wright points out that the arrow was stitched in later. Well, you certainly can't stitch the entire scene simultaneously; some of it had to come later. His point is that perhaps Harold didn't die from that arrow in the eye. That may or may not be, but the fact (and yes, it is a fact) is that the figure stitched on that Tapestry has his arm lifted up and his hand close to his face, and his fingers are clearly clasping something. Very probably, the arrow. Print the legend.
It all comes down to a matter of perspective. What do you see? What do you want to see? In the book of photos, the author points out one of the Aesopian images as the fable of the pregnant bitch. (I had to look that one up; I'd never heard of it.) The image is a kind of curved bank, (rather like an ocean wave) with a bunch of heads poking out and looking at a canine standing in front. The fable is of a pregnant bitch needing a place to whelp, and a shepherd kindly loans her a place. Once the pups are grown enough to back up Mom, Mom informs the shepherd that she's keeping the place. Moral: people that you show a kindness to will sometimes turn on you. O.K. That's cool. But later in the Tapestry, that identical imagery shows up again. Despite the fact that some other fables are shown at least twice, the author does not identify this as a second showing of the pregnant bitch fable, he merely states that some animals seem to be hiding. Did he just forget about the fable, or did he want a different interpretation?
You could probably study this Tapestry for a lifetime and not come to any definite conclusions. It is a fascinating piece, all the more amazing that this fragile fabric has lasted nearly intact (what DID happen to that last section??!!!) for almost a thousand years.
What do you see?
I got onto this book via a Great Courses set on the Medieval World. At the same time I got this book at the library, I also got a lovely, big book filled with close-up photographs of the Tapestry. (OK, it's actually an "Embroidery", but the name isn't going to change any time soon.) The photos were so excellent that I kept thinking that I could reach out and feel the textures. The work is amazing. Also a little weird, with colors apparently tossed in at random (a red animal with a white tail, a horse with multiple colors). In crowded scenes, some of the men's faces are stitched in with dark threads, making them really catch the eye. The big book of photos shows the Tapestry "warts and all", with stains, holes, damaged spots, and repairs clearly to be seen. The Decoding book shows the scenes in glorious bright colors, presumably how it might have looked when brand new. I find his hypothesis that the border art is giving commentary on the big main images fascinating, and I think that it shows fairly good evidence. His ideas on what Harold might possibly have MEANT to do when he landed in Normandy are also interesting.
That having been said, I have to say this: I found this book extremely aggravating. I kept thinking of a line I read in an Elizabeth Peters book: "You are twisting facts to suit a theory, not basing a theory on known facts." He puts a lot of his statements as questions, making it clear that it's opinion and speculation, but there are also places where he authoritatively states his opinions as facts.
One of the problems is that the imagery in the Tapestry, both the main sections and the borders, are up for interpretation. In other words, where you see a po-tay-to, I see a po-tah-to.
Examples: * he makes the flat statement that King Edward is represented as sickly and frail, although no other contemporary references do so. Sorry, but I don't see him as frail in that first scene. He definitely looks comparatively older, but then, he WAS. He looks like he's enjoying himself, too, as though he's about to give a big smile.
* he states that the two fancy birds beneath Edward in the border are "caladrii"--mystical birds that tend to hang around royalty. Problem is, the caladrius is a snow-white bird, no color, and these birds have dark blue (or black) barred wings and crests. Yes, he knows that, but they're still caladrii because if they stitched white birds into the tapestry, they would be take n as ghostly portents, so of course they had to put in some color. Oh, really? I think if you stitched the outline of a bird with dark thread, leaving the white background fabric to do the rest, you would have a proper recognizable white bird. Pale thread for a ghostly bird. In point of fact, there is an all-white bird in the Tapestry. Or perhaps it's pale gold. At any rate, it's all one color. Perhaps a ghost bird? We won't get the answer from Wright, because he ignored it. Perhaps he didn't notice it, being ghostly!
I can imagine a conversation at the first viewing of the Tapestry:
"This is really something. Look, there's old King Edward. What are those fancy white-and blue birds under him?"
"Are you daft, man? Can't you tell those are caladrii?"
"Oh, go on. Everyone knows that a caladrius is a pure white bird. For royalty, don't you know."
"Yeah, but if they had made them white, we might think they were ghosts. So they threw in a bit of color. They knew that we would understand."
"YOU might, I don't. As far as I'm concerned, if it's not white, it must be something else. How about eagles? They look like they could be eagles."
And so on. There are birds that he identifies as flamingos (in 1066 England?) despite the fact that there are other birds with exactly the same shape that are called other things. In the scene where Edward's body is being carried to Westminster, he describes a pard (cat) "prowling and howling" beneath. First off, cats aren't known for throwing their heads back and howling; that's a canine thing. Second, the red body looks distinctly like a fox. In fact, a very good representation of a fox. The tail isn't all that fox-like, but I didn't see any foxes in the Tapestry with the traditional "brush" tail.
In another scene (the one on the cover of the book) he describes the animal down below leaping and seizing a goose as a tiger. (In 1066 England. Yup.) It must be a tiger; it has stripes. Ahh...not the way I see it. In the photo book, where you can see it nice and clear, those spots on the body are...spots. Big, lumpy spots, to be sure, but spots. Not stripes. And the body is clearly a canine shape, as you can see plainly when you compare it with the very next beast, identified as another fox, this one seizing a (presumed) hen. The body shapes are virtually identical; one is just a little larger. And another thing: he interprets the "tiger" as representing a fierce warrior taking down an enemy spy or watchman. The fox next door, who is doing exactly the same thing, is interpreted as "To the victor belong the spoils". Two different interpretations for essentially the same picture.
While we're here, allow me to point out an oddity that I spotted with this scene. If you study the borders, you'll see patterns. They have a set of images that have been interpreted as scenes from Aesop's fables, but a lot of them are simply birds and beasts. And the majority of them seem to come in pairs, with both creatures doing the same thing--looking startled, biting their tails, heads down, heads looking backward, etc. The colors are sometimes different. And with each pair, they either face each other, or they have their backs to each other. Rarely, there will be a four-way set, with bird, beast, beast, then matching bird. In this one single spot, with the two creatures (call them what you will) leaping to snag a bird, they are both leaping in the SAME DIRECTION. They are not facing each other, or back-to-back. This seems trivial, but it really grabbed my attention, and I do think that it's the only place on the Tapestry where this happens. I would like to know if there's some significance there.
Another really irritating point: the book does not contain images of the entire Tapestry. Why the (bleep) not? He is constantly referencing images that the reader cannot look at for him/herself. (Unless, like me, they also have a nice big book of pictures.) Why didn't they make the book just a little longer and include all the images? Maybe collect them in order at the back, in an appendix.
Wright clearly does not admire William the Conqueror (William the Bastard until he became a success, as Richard Armour once pointed out.) He rarely misses an opportunity to point this out. In the thick of the battle scenes, William curiously fades out of the picture. His half-brother, Bishop Odo, is in the center of things, rallying the men and moving forward to the climax. Wright interprets this to mean that William was frightened at this point, scared out of his chauses that he was going to lose the battle, and contemplating fleeing the field and leaving his men behind. (This, by the way, is the same William that we see a few inches away making the supremely courageous and fearfully risky action of removing his helm, so that his men can see that he's still alive--and so can the enemy!) What other explanation can there be? Well, in just a few paragraphs, he himself offers a perfectly good explanation: Wright tends toward the theory that Bishop Odo himself commissioned the Tapestry, and you can be certain that Odo told the designer to make him look good, even at William's expense. (This also explains the scene of the feast, where Odo is presiding and looking remarkably like Jesus at the Last Supper, while William apparently wasn't hungry.)
It is a fact that history is written by the victors. But William did have a good claim to the throne (as did numerous other people) and who is to say at this late date if Edward promised it to him or not, or if Harold pledged it to William (touching those icons!) or not?
There's a spot near the end of the battle where one of the border creatures (looks like a little dog) seems to have gotten himself thrown up into the main body of the tapestry, and he looks like he's frantically trying to crawl back down to the safety of the border again! Wright makes no mention of this. Curious. Surely it meant something? He said that EVERYTHING in the border meant something.
In Harold's death scene, Wright points out that the arrow was stitched in later. Well, you certainly can't stitch the entire scene simultaneously; some of it had to come later. His point is that perhaps Harold didn't die from that arrow in the eye. That may or may not be, but the fact (and yes, it is a fact) is that the figure stitched on that Tapestry has his arm lifted up and his hand close to his face, and his fingers are clearly clasping something. Very probably, the arrow. Print the legend.
It all comes down to a matter of perspective. What do you see? What do you want to see? In the book of photos, the author points out one of the Aesopian images as the fable of the pregnant bitch. (I had to look that one up; I'd never heard of it.) The image is a kind of curved bank, (rather like an ocean wave) with a bunch of heads poking out and looking at a canine standing in front. The fable is of a pregnant bitch needing a place to whelp, and a shepherd kindly loans her a place. Once the pups are grown enough to back up Mom, Mom informs the shepherd that she's keeping the place. Moral: people that you show a kindness to will sometimes turn on you. O.K. That's cool. But later in the Tapestry, that identical imagery shows up again. Despite the fact that some other fables are shown at least twice, the author does not identify this as a second showing of the pregnant bitch fable, he merely states that some animals seem to be hiding. Did he just forget about the fable, or did he want a different interpretation?
You could probably study this Tapestry for a lifetime and not come to any definite conclusions. It is a fascinating piece, all the more amazing that this fragile fabric has lasted nearly intact (what DID happen to that last section??!!!) for almost a thousand years.
What do you see?
August 16, 2025
A fascinating exploration of the margins of the famous Bayeux Tapestry (https://www.bayeuxmuseum.com/en/the-b...), especially interesting because traditional analyses have only focused on its main images.
Some of the images in the tapestry are a bit hard to interpret beyond any doubt, according to most mainstream historians, and I don't like that sometimes the author presents some tentative opinions as facts (for example, identifying the types of birds featured and their symbolic meanings), but this still makes for a very good read.
Some of the images in the tapestry are a bit hard to interpret beyond any doubt, according to most mainstream historians, and I don't like that sometimes the author presents some tentative opinions as facts (for example, identifying the types of birds featured and their symbolic meanings), but this still makes for a very good read.
July 18, 2026
This is not a history but perhaps a true decoding as the title suggests. It seems to be well researched but the reading can be slow doing. The book is extremely speculative and I suppose you have to have faith in the author's point of view to find it informative. I didn't find that faith. Too often 'facts' were laid out and the conclusion was "it cannot be any other way" which was far from being evident to me. Does the embroidery present real mysteries? Yes. Have they been decoded? That's up to you.
May 17, 2025
The Bayeux Tapestry piques my interest, but I quickly regretted selecting this book. Unable to stop reading once I start, I finished it reluctantly. At least it’s short.
The book focuses on the tapestry’s marginalia (critters inhabiting the top and bottom margins of the tapestry), offering lengthy personal interpretations often based on Aesop’s Fables that seem largely speculative.
Wright assumes you are intimately familiar with the medieval bestiary. What, exactly, is a “bile spouting, forked tongued wyvern”? The author includes A Glossary of Creatures Found in the Tapestry, but I found it easier just to keep Google close at hand.
Well… spending a few minutes reading a review or two would be a far better use of my time than simply diving into unknown titles the way I have been doing! This book will appeal to some academics but, even then, I got the feeling that the author might be a bit of an outlier in his field.
The book focuses on the tapestry’s marginalia (critters inhabiting the top and bottom margins of the tapestry), offering lengthy personal interpretations often based on Aesop’s Fables that seem largely speculative.
Wright assumes you are intimately familiar with the medieval bestiary. What, exactly, is a “bile spouting, forked tongued wyvern”? The author includes A Glossary of Creatures Found in the Tapestry, but I found it easier just to keep Google close at hand.
Well… spending a few minutes reading a review or two would be a far better use of my time than simply diving into unknown titles the way I have been doing! This book will appeal to some academics but, even then, I got the feeling that the author might be a bit of an outlier in his field.
May 26, 2019
Here we have a look at the infamous Bayeux Tapestry so familiar from our school history lessons telling the story of the Norman Invasion of 1066. This book looks at what the Tapestry shows and attempts to interpret the parts of the narrative that have hitherto been lost in time, essentially the margins. Their story is told using a range of archaeological input and medieval bestiary information as well as referring to classical myth.
The book is produced to a high standard and the quality of reproduction is good. Some authors wear their knowledge lightly but that is not so here, the author is often boastful of their researches and frequently dismissive of the output of others. He also doesn't seem to have decided whether he is going to provide an academic piece or a more popular account introducing the non-historian to the richness of the Tapestry. The first two chapters are rambling and repetitive and I struggled to make it through them to read what was to come. That said the author does hold the tale well as it doesn't feel like a laborious scene to scene retelling. I did learn many things from this book and the variety of topics covered in addition to the Tapestry itself provided some context.
#DecodingTheBayeuxTapestry #NetGalley
The book is produced to a high standard and the quality of reproduction is good. Some authors wear their knowledge lightly but that is not so here, the author is often boastful of their researches and frequently dismissive of the output of others. He also doesn't seem to have decided whether he is going to provide an academic piece or a more popular account introducing the non-historian to the richness of the Tapestry. The first two chapters are rambling and repetitive and I struggled to make it through them to read what was to come. That said the author does hold the tale well as it doesn't feel like a laborious scene to scene retelling. I did learn many things from this book and the variety of topics covered in addition to the Tapestry itself provided some context.
#DecodingTheBayeuxTapestry #NetGalley
August 9, 2020
Honestly, I had never heard of the Bayeux Tapestry, and I've never seen it in it's entirety, pictures or otherwise. So this book was tough for me to understand. However, I feel if someone knows about this amazing creation, and they are interested in learning more about the symbolism behind it, this would be the perfect book to read.
May 8, 2019
A well researched, entertaining and interesting book that can be read as a novel.
It's full of interesting explanations and gives you a clear idea of the Tapestry.
Recommended!
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine
It's full of interesting explanations and gives you a clear idea of the Tapestry.
Recommended!
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews