Could the Queen Mother have secured the loan of the Bayeux Tapestry to the British Museum 45 years ago?
After many centuries, the Bayeux Tapestry is returning to Britain in 2026. But as the loan draws closer, new information about attempts to bring forth a previous loan have come to light
A visit by the Queen Mother (Elizabeth II’s mother) to the opening of the Memorial Museum of the Battle of Normandy in 1981 might have smoothed the way to a loan of the Bayeux Tapestry to the British Museum almost 50 years ago, according to recently released files seen by HistoryExtra.
The Bayeux Tapestry is being loaned to the British Museum in 2026, but attempts at a previous loan in 1980-1 have newly come to light.
In early 1981, the mayor of Bayeux, Monsieur Le Carpentier, sent an invitation to the Queen Mother to attend the opening of the Memorial Museum of the Battle of Normandy, and asked her if she would agree to be a patron of the new institution.
Reginald Hibbert, the British Ambassador in Paris, in February 1981 wrote a note to the Foreign Office, advising on how to react to the invitation.
“I do not intend to suggest that the negotiations between the British Museum and the Musées de France should affect decisions on the invitation now being extended to Queen Elizabeth, but it is perhaps something which should be borne in mind. The British Museum might take the view that if the Queen Mother extends her patronage to the new Bayeux Museum the Bayeux Authorities ought to be ready to encourage the Musées de France to be more forthcoming over the Bayeux Tapestry. I would advise against such linkage as wholly inappropriate, but I think the point needs to be borne in mind by those who will tender advice to Queen Elizabeth.”
Further, Hibbert made reference to “a minor dispute which has looked like causing difficulty between the British Museum and the authorities at Bayeux”. He explained that “The British Museum has been wanting to borrow the Bayeux Tapestry for display in London. The Musées de France recently reached a decision that the Tapestry could not be lent because it is too fragile”.
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The newly released file also contains a draft note by a Foreign Office official, J.C.A. Dove, composed in March 1981, and intended for the Queen Mother’s private secretary: “I should also explain that a favourable decision by Her Majesty could be instrumental in encouraging the French authorities to authorise the loan of the Bayeux Tapestry to The British Museum although I hasten to add that our recommendation is in no way connected in this aspect. Nevertheless I felt you should know that there have been some difficulties over negotiating a loan of the Tapestry”.
The failed move for a Bayeux Tapestry loan
The timing of this note is curious, as the difficulties cited were that in the previous November, Monsieur Pattyn, the Director of Heritage at the French Ministry of Culture, had turned down a request from the British Museum for a loan of the Tapestry. It’s not surprising that there should have been such discussions at the time, as Neil Stratford, the British Museum keeper charged with exploring the possibility, recalled to HistoryExtra in an interview in December 2025.
“The British Museum director, David Wilson, discovered that the Bayeux Tapestry was going to be conserved and its museum was going to be shut for about two years. David Wilson commissioned me to go off to France and talk to the relevant ministries in France and in Normandy about it being put on show in London during the period when it was off show in in Bayeux”.
For much of the 20th century, the Tapestry had been housed in the town’s Hotel du Doyen, but in 1980 work had started on a purpose-built exhibition space within the fabric of the late 17th-century Grand Seminary building. The Tapestry was placed in its new home in the old seminary in 1983. The redisplay of the Tapestry provided a window of opportunity for a potential loan (similarly, today, the Tapestry is off display in Bayeux while its museum is being redeveloped).
Neil Stratford received positive responses from Paris and Bayeux during his trip, and returned to the UK reasonably confident that a loan could be agreed. In the end, though, the decision on the loan was ‘non’ from France. According to a memo that Stratford wrote to the British Museum Director Wilson in December 1980, he gathered that Pattyn had been advised by his heritage experts that the tapestry required restoration, which would take five months. That would have necessitated the Tapestry being off display in Bayeux, and a consequent loss of tourism revenue. Pattyn had been further appraised that an extra period of time without the Tapestry on show in the town (were it on loan to the British Museum) would be unacceptable to Bayeux, particularly as restoration had to happen before any potential loan. Stratford understood that there were concerns in the French Ministry that if the tapestry were lent to the British Museum before this restoration was carried out, the Bayeux authorities might then reject the restoration work.
There was clearly some mixed messaging over the dynamic between local and national forces in France, as Stratford makes reference to his own conversations with these authorities in Bayeux. His assumption was that it was with the town of Bayeux that the loan “initiative would founder” as it was his understanding that “the Tapestry was given to the citizens of Bayeux by Bonaparte and they have absolute legal control over its destiny”. Stratford acknowledged his surprise when he learnt that the Mayor of Bayeux and the town council had not actually refused the loan, though neither had they agreed to it.
The long history of Bayeux Tapestry loan negotiations
The various negotiations for loans of the Tapestry to the UK that occurred during the 20th century (in 1931, 1953, 1966, 1972, and as demonstrated by the recent release of files, 1980) involved a blend of local and national politics in Normandy and France. In these conversations, there was some confusion over whether it was the French state or the Municipality of Bayeux who had the authority to sanction a deal.
Clarity was provided by a 2017 custodianship agreement which stated that the French state was the owner of the work, and the city of Bayeux its long-term custodian. This renewable agreement remains in force until 2066, which will be the year of the thousandth anniversary of the battle of Hastings.
If confusion over the ownership of the Tapestry had dogged loan discussions in the past, the importance of not damaging the embroidery was never in doubt. In 1980, the British Museum was at pains to stress that they had put the work in to demonstrate that the Tapestry could be moved without risk, and that the safe transport and display of the embroidery was a paramount concern to them.
Neil Stratford’s recollection today of the conversations he had back in 1980 with Mlle Bertrand, who had been the Tapestry curator in Bayeux for many years, suggests that there were no qualms about its fitness to travel on the Normandy side of the Channel either: “Mlle Bertrand knew every inch of the tapestry. She said to me that the only reason that the odd thread pulls out is because it was restored in the 19th century and it's those restorations which occasionally pull out, but the original medieval sewing is as tough as old boots and that there's no risk whatsoever about moving it. That’s what she said to me.”
In advance of the forthcoming loan in 2026, concerns have been raised about the Tapestry’s fragility, but British Museum curators are working closely with French colleagues to ensure that the embroidery will be transported to the UK in a safe fashion. Indeed, the agreement between the UK government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport, British Museum and French Ministry of Culture states that the loan “shall be undertaken in the spirit of a balanced partnership and mutual scholarly interest”. The agreement contains extensive provision for measures designed to ensure that the embroidery is not put at risk during its passage to the UK nor its presentation in the museum.
Discussions for the current loan project have been a long time in fruition. Following a Bayeux Tapestry conference at the British Museum in 2008, BBC History Magazine ran an article canvassing experts on whether the Tapestry might ever be loaned to the UK, after the British Museum’s in-house Tapestry expert Michael Lewis had raised the idea (partly in jest) during the conference. Ten years later in 2018, the New Yorker magazine reported that in 2013, Lewis, as part of Bayeux Museums’s Tapestry scientific committee, said the idea occurred to him straight-away that the Tapestry could be loaned while the new museum was being built.
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How the Bayeux Tapestry loan was finally agreed
It was only in 2018 that the concept became a reality, when French President Macron announced the intention to bring the loan to life during an Anglo-French summit in the UK with then Prime Minister Theresa May. The timescale touted then was that the loan might happen in 2022 when the museum in Bayeux was being remodelled.
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The timeline might have slipped, and several British Prime Ministers come and gone, but President Macron has remained in power. It was he that made the announcement this year of the definitive exhibition timetable (September 2026 for 10 months) and destination (British Museum), in another Anglo-French summit with Sir Keir Starmer.
Lord Parkinson, the Heritage Minister from 2021 to 2024 under the Conservative administration, told HistoryExtra that it was President Macron’s personal determination that saw the process through. “I think this really has come from Emmanuel Macron himself. In the Royal Gallery address to parliament [in 2025], he saw Theresa May was sitting in the second row, and he acknowledged that this is an idea that began when Theresa May was Prime Minister and it’s taken too long. So I think he’s aware that he made this very kind suggestion [of loaning the Tapestry]. He wanted to deliver on his promise, and this summit has allowed him to do that”.
Macron also noted, in his July 2025 address at the British Museum, that it was the personal support of King Charles III that helped move things forward, along with the work of the two governments’ special envoys, M. Belaval for France, and Lord Ricketts for the UK. Royal backing does not appear to have been sought by UK government officials in the previous request in 1980, with the hesitancy over linking the Queen Mother’s potential patronage of the new museum of the Battle of Normandy to the British Museum’s negotiations.
The Queen Mother did not attend the opening of the Memorial Museum of the Battle of Normandy in 1981.
Authors
David Musgrove is the content director at HistoryExtra