Women in Stitches: The Making of the Bayeux Tapestry

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BBC Radio 4 - Women in Stitches: The Making of the Bayeux Tapestry

Who stitched the Bayeux Tapestry? Abigail Youngman looks for clues in the margins.

It's a world famous work of art, a piece of political propaganda, a mystery.  No one knows who made the Bayeux Tapestry.  Abigail Youngman looks for clues in the margins.

The Bayeux Tapestry is coming to Britain in the near future. It’s among the world’s most famous works of art, but it's also a mystery: no one knows who made it. The stitching, though, is full of clues.  Abigail Youngman seeks to reveal the truth about the lives of the women who stitched it, to unpick the secrets they left in plain sight, in the margins of the tapestry.   

The Bayeux Tapestry records great historical events but its humanity is in the details: the little boy holding his mother's hand tightly as they flee their burning home; scenes of sexual violence; bawdy jokes at the Normans' expense. Scholarly opinion is divided, but some think it was stitched by Anglo-Saxon women who had experienced war and occupation first-hand. 

The main panels were probably designed by an Important Man (hence the focus on battles, on big sexy horses – surely the BMWs of their day – and political propaganda).  But the margins of the tapestry may have been left to the imagination of the stitchers themselves: probably English women.  This 'freehand' marginalia tell a different story, sometimes undercutting the message of the Norman conquerors in surprising ways.  We can imagine the camaraderie and humour of the women sewing it, talking, about their personal tragedies, the terror they survived, the soldiers who were husbands and sons.  

Read this way, the Tapestry becomes a tantalising portrait of a group of women who are largely unrepresented in history, speaking to us vividly from a thousand years ago.  

Abigail Youngman uncovers fascinating and intimate details of these women's lives with the help of Dr Alexandra Makin, Dr Daisy Black, Dr Christopher Monk, Professor Gail Owen-Crocker and Dr Michael Lewis.

Producer...Mary Ward-Lowery

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

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Women in Stitches: The Making of the Bayeux Tapestry

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