Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
How William the Conqueror brutally secured rule of England
Marc Morris discusses the long and bloody conquest of England that followed William's victory at the Battle of Hastings
William of Normandy’s victory at the battle of Hastings in October 1066 was far from the end of the Norman Conquest of England. It took many years, and putting down no small amount of rebellion, for William to fully establish control. In the final episode of our new series on 1066, Marc Morris discusses the long story of the Norman Conquest with David Musgrove. Watch now, or listen to the ad-free podcast below: View Green Video on the source website Want to hear more? Browse more episodes in our podcast series on 1066
1066 is the most famous year in English history, was marked by not just one, but three major battles, and saw three different men ruling as king of England. Marc Morris charts the events of 1066 and the fates of the key contenders in the fight for England's throne
The year 1066 is the most famous year in English history, and was marked by not just one, but three major battles, and saw three different men ruling as king of England. In the third episode of our series on 1066, Marc Morris, in conversation with David Musgrove, outlines how the tumultuous year played out and charts the fates of the key contenders in the fight for England's throne. Watch now, or listen to the ad-free podcast below: View Green Video on the source website Want to hear more? Browse more episodes in our podcast series on 1066
Not 1066 again! Should we ditch our obsession with dates?
From 1066 to 1918, our obsession with battles, elections and even voyages of discovery risks distorting a true understanding of the past
In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. That, at least, is what the famous rhyme tells us. Memorising such dates is a common experience of being taught history – a cliché superbly lampooned by the witty 1930 book 1066 and All That. “History is not what you thought,” its preface suggested. “It is what you can remember.” Accordingly, as per its subtitle, it offered a “Memorable History of England, Comprising All the Parts You Can Remember, Including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates.” Conspicuously, though, “two out of the four dates originally included were eliminated at the last moment” because “they are not memorable.” Though evidently both humorists, the book’s authors – Punch writers WC Sellar and RJ Yeatman – were making a serious point. History has long been thought to be concerned with preserving the past. The 12th-century historian and Byzantine princess Anna Komnene observed how “time in its irresistible and ceaseless flow carries along on its flood all created things and drowns them in the depths of obscurity”. Her solution was the study of history, which “forms a very strong bulwark against the stream of time”. This is a powerful idea – one that perhaps moved King Charles I, moments before his execution in January 1649, to utter a last single word to William Juxon, the former bishop of London, instructing him: “Remember.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/1066-and-all-that-later-edition-CMYKWeb-Ready-dfb5326.jpg" width="2295" height="1530" alt="The cover of a book, with the title 1066 And All That across the top, and two men standing side by side in green and pink clothing" title="The 1930 book 1066 and All That wittily parodied the conventional approach to teaching history in schools at that time (Image by Amazon)" /> But do our efforts to remember really require us to do something so trivial as memorising dates? More radically, do the historical events these dates mark even matter? The Oxford English Dictionary leaves little room for doubt. Its definition of an event is “something that happens or takes place, especially something significant or noteworthy”. History is often taught as a succinct sequence of such occurrences – those accepted as important moments, neatly knitted together to explain the present. Indeed, for many historians, especially those preoccupied with political, constitutional or military matters, the practice of history itself involves assessing the importance of events by examining their causes, contexts and consequences, considering how they represent change or continuity over time. Yet almost no archaeologist would approach the past in such terms. Nor would many of today’s social, economic or cultural historians. In the 20th century, proponents of the Annales school, named for a scholarly journal, famously considered events relatively insignificant. French historian Fernand Braudel (1902–85) argued that events were simply “surface disturbances, crests of foam that the tides of history carry on their strong backs”. Has the importance given to events been overstated? Should we, therefore, put less emphasis on learning dates? Are there better ways of understanding history? The first issue to consider is just how ‘important’ dates are selected. If we are told that some day or year is more noteworthy than another, who decided this? It would be appealing to be able to say that the established chronology has been objectively selected by balanced, skilled historians, and arrived at through years of scrupulous scholarship and vigorous debate. Yet history is a human thing, written and argued over for all kinds of reasons. Even if such matters are really decided by historians – instead of, say, politicians or poets – we are all equally flawed, prone to error and liable to misinterpret the past through a panoply of biases, conscious or not. Moreover, humans are social animals and have consequently evolved to value convention, tradition and the received wisdom of our ancestors. Most of us simply accept the established chronology. Such a shared history can indeed function as a powerful bond cementing the otherwise disparate identities of social groups. To reinforce this sense of the collective, past incidents thought worthy of remembrance were once upon a time written in stone – literally. The Parian Marble, a fragment of a stele found on the island of Paros and now displayed in the ancient Greek section of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum, is inscribed with a neat chronology of events and their dates from 1582 BC to 299 BC in our terms. These include the fall of Troy, purportedly in 1209–1208 BC, and the rather more reliably dated battle of Marathon in 490 BC. The stele’s text, similar to the earlier ‘Sumerian King List’ housed in the nearby Mesopotamian gallery, fuses myth with history. Such objects represent early examples of a phenomenon that has become increasingly common in the past two centuries or so. With the rise of nation states, backstories have been created for their “imagined communities”, as Anglo-Irish political scientist Benedict Anderson famously dubbed nations in 1983. These stories typically rest on simple historical narratives, ideally sprinkled with a few inspirational national heroes and some key dates. In the UK, a chronology of past rulers plays a major role. Reigns became surrogates for eras, suffused with each ruler’s character. Looking back, for example, we see all those who were alive between 1837 and 1901 as ‘Victorians’. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-815264642cmykWeb-Ready-2ce7a55.jpg" width="3569" height="2379" alt="A 2017 re-enactment of the 1410 battle of Grunwald. Poles and Lithuanians see this victory over the German Teutonic Order as a turning point in their national stories (Image by Getty Images)" title="A 2017 re-enactment of the 1410 battle of Grunwald. Poles and Lithuanians see this victory over the German Teutonic Order as a turning point in their national stories (Image by Getty Images)" /> Battles are often key parts of national stories. Like Marathon for the ancient Greeks, the battles of Hastings in 1066 and Agincourt in 1415 are considered important to the English. For the British more generally, Trafalgar in 1805 and Waterloo in 1815 are significant. In Serbia, the notoriously bloody battle of Kosovo in 1389, in which forces led by Prince Lazar Hrebeljanović squared up to an invading Ottoman army under the command of Sultan Murad I, has been endlessly mythologised. Lithuanians and Poles still celebrate victory over the German Teutonic Order at the battle of Grunwald in 1410. But few dates and events are as significant as national narratives suggest, battles least of all. Why? Because battles, though certainly rare and dramatic moments, are seldom, if ever, decisive at ending wars so can’t be imbued with much causal importance. Even after Hastings, at which much of the English ruling class was killed, it took William the Conqueror many years to bring England truly under Norman rule, a period notorious for the so-called Harrying of the North (1069–70). Likewise, the greatly celebrated clash at Agincourt (1415), which owes much of its fame to William Shakespeare, saw the mass slaughter of French nobility – but it was not until 1420 that Henry V forced Charles VI to agree to recognise the Plantagenet claim to the French throne under the Treaty of Troyes. Read more | Do you know the correct date of Magna Carta? Here’s why you might be wrong Yet such totemic dates are repeatedly reinforced by that staple of public history and national myth-making: the commemoration of anniversaries. These appear to be good moments to reconsider the past and revive enthusiasm for historical enquiry, but there’s a built-in problem: at least outwardly, nobody involved questions the real significance of the events marked – that would defeat the exercise. It is understandable that, on occasion, people wish to memorialise the loss of their loved ones in wars or other disasters. In general, however, anniversaries reflect current concerns and as such are profoundly unhelpful when it comes to understanding what happened in the past. Admittedly, some moments appear to have been so overwhelmingly important that they demand our attention. For Europe, the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453 seems epochal. In China, the final defeat of the Song dynasty by the forces of Kublai Khan in 1279 has a similar significance. Yet these events represent the culmination of long and complex processes. Seen in this light, the events themselves were largely symbolic. Surely, you say, the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas in 1492 had massive historical consequences. Well, one can quibble over whether his first voyage itself achieved much – likewise his three further transatlantic expeditions in 1493–96, 1498–1500 and 1502–04, for that matter – despite being catastrophic for the indigenous Taíno people of the Caribbean. Columbus thought – and continued to think for the rest of his life – that he was exploring east Asia. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-599969077cmykWeb-Ready-7d51147.jpg" width="4272" height="2848" alt="A painting of a man dressed in a white shirt with a brown cloak, and a dark hat" title="This 1519 portrait reputedly depicts Christopher Columbus. Did his first transatlantic voyage in 1492 really have such world-changing consequences? (Image by Getty Images)" /> The world indeed changed thereafter as it gradually fused into what, in 1974, the American economic historian and sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein termed the “modern world-system”, but this was not an inevitable consequence of Columbus’s first voyage. After all, Europeans had been in the Americas before. The Norseman Leif Erikson is thought to have reached North America around AD 1000, and a Norse settlement excavated at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, Canada seems to support this. So it is of far greater historical significance that pivotal processes occurred after 1492 – but not after 1000. This is a point made in Alfred W Crosby’s groundbreaking 1972 book The Columbian Exchange, a foundational text of environmental history that charted the seismic global effects of the intercontinental transfer of plants, animals, diseases and cultures. Such developments can be shown to be genuinely transformative to people’s lives, from the food they ate to the diseases that afflicted them. By contrast, traditional chronology often neglects the experiences of a broad spectrum of people. Not everyone was present at battles or on voyages of discovery. Indeed, most humans who have ever lived were peasants who wrested their subsistence from the soil. For these people, few experiences were shared beyond a restricted locality, especially in periods when speeds of travel were slow and communication limited. Nearly all people must have been ignorant of what we now assert, after the fact, were key events. Others would have been simply indifferent. According to the historian De Lamar Jennsen, the Spanish Armada – King Philip II of Spain’s unsuccessful project to invade England in summer 1588 – was the “worst kept secret in Europe”. Yet research suggests that, far from striving to achieve victory for their country in some epic national struggle, during the Armada many English sailors and merchants were more preoccupied with selling food and other supplies to the enemy than with fighting them. Perhaps the key problem is that narrative history gives us a false sense of order, in part by playing to our innate tendency to identify and interpret patterns. It suggests that big events necessarily have big consequences. This completely fails to account for the unpredictable nature of the world through which we move. Seemingly insignificant factors can and do have a disproportionate impact on history. As the proverb has it in James Baldwin’s version: “For want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; for the want of a horse the battle was lost; for the failure of battle the kingdom was lost; and all for the want of a horseshoe nail.” Conversely, apparently important things can turn out to be irrelevant. To return to Columbus, how are we to frame the decision of Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon to support him, having equivocated for years over whether to stump up the cash to fund his voyage west? Some cite the fall of Granada to Christian forces in January 1492 – marking the end of Islamic rule on the Iberian peninsula, which gave the co-ruler monarchs both confidence and the promise of more secure finances – as the key explanation for their change of heart. Assuming this were true, we could equally portray what happened as the result of the Arab Nasrid dynasty, which ruled the Emirate of Granada for more than 250 years, carelessly losing control of their territory. In the latter reading, Wallerstein’s modern world-system was in a sense created “for want of a nail”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-128261385cmykWeb-Ready-6731e0e.jpg" width="3941" height="2628" alt="A photograph of a courtyard under tall, intricate archways with several columns throughout" title="The Court of the Lions in the Alhambra, Granada. That city’s fall in January 1492 arguably led to the European colonisation of the Americas. But it’s an episode that can be framed in different ways, argues Robert Blackmore (Image by Getty Images)" /> As should be becoming clear, questioning the assumptions that underpin so much conventional narrative history has serious implications. This forces you, for example, to recognise that the lowliest peasant may have been as significant as an emperor or king, and that their relative impact on history was not necessarily proportionate to their immediate influence. “The ruler’s power was rarely effective,” Danish historian Patricia Crone put it, “even within such sphere of competence as he did enjoy.” Braudel hauntingly evoked a “historian who takes a seat in Philip II’s chair and reads his papers” and is transported into “a world of strong passions” but one “unconscious of the deeper realities of history, of the running waters on which our frail barks are tossed like cockleshells”. Yet such is our wish to impose order on a complex world that we have frequently reached for elaborate explanations for erratic ‘nonlinear’ outcomes, among them the capricious will of deities, the movements of celestial bodies, even conspiracy theories. In truth, because our evidence of the past is so incomplete, we are unlikely ever to pinpoint true cause and effect. Despite this, we still tend to look for what Annales school historian Marc Bloch called “the idol of origins”. Countless books claim to trace the roots of anything from states and religions to sports. Even the aforesaid Parian Marble located the birth of agriculture to 1409–08 BC when the goddess Demeter supposedly invented grain crops. In practical terms, though, nothing has any origin in history. “For most historical realities,” Bloch wrote in the early 1940s, “the very notion of a starting point remains singularly elusive.” As we have shown, we cannot even be sure that the origin of the Columbian Exchange was Columbus himself. Read more | A thousand years ago, the Vikings had a shock encounter with Native Americans that ended in disaster Indeed, trying to frame this story, we could be more radical and go back even before the time of Leif Erikson – perhaps all the way back to 14,800 years ago, when the Bering Strait Land Bridge was last rendered impassable and Asia was fully separated from the Americas. But where do you stop? Rather than there being actual origins, all things were and are constantly in the course of being made through a process of emergence. As Bloch argued, “A historical phenomenon can never be understood apart from its moment in time. This is true of every evolutionary stage, our own and all others.” So how, then, are we to approach history without straightforward narratives? There are any number of options. Some historians, such as those of the Annales school, have examined historical structures – social, political and economic – rather than events to explain change, frequently over the long term. This approach has often been fused with the so-called histoire des mentalités (history of attitudes), which endeavours to understand the perspectives of those in the past in their own terms. Meanwhile, some social and economic historians have used Marxist theory and framed conflict between social classes as explaining change. Others have put the emphasis on demography and land use. Today, in a time of climate change, many historians are interested in understanding past societies’ interactions with their environments. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-122317088cmykWeb-Ready-15b2d1a.jpg" width="3708" height="2472" alt="An image showing four people dressed in wool skins and carrying spears, walking across a large" title="An illustration depicts Asian hunters migrating across the Bering Strait Land Bridge. The strait becoming impassable some 15,000 years ago was a vital juncture in global history (Image by Getty Images)" /> Each new approach has inevitably attracted criticism for its own alleged oversimplification and misrepresentation of the past. British historians, in particular, were notoriously hostile to the Annales school. Geoffrey Elton of the University of Cambridge, for example, held to his focus on events, with disdain for nearly all scholarship outside the study of power politics. It is said that his colleague Maurice Cowling would privately exclaim: “Annales is balls!” Despite such intransigence, though, new ideas did spread. Going forward, future historians will doubtless find even more innovative forms of historical enquiry using formidable artificial intelligence-driven tools. Read more | Do you know all the major periods in British history? To be clear, though they make less of specific events, new approaches are not necessarily histories without dates. Peter Laslett, in his pioneering 1965 work of social history The World We Have Lost, even began with one: “In the year 1619 the bakers of London applied to the authorities for an increase in the price of bread.” Though Laslett pinpoints a moment that might seem banal when compared with a great battle, coronation or discovery, we should arguably accord such granular details equal attention for what they tell us of our ancestors’ priorities. Their world, like our own, was a practically infinite morass of events and dates whose relative importance and interrelationships were vastly more uncertain than we impulsively suppose. History is not, as one student in Alan Bennett’s 2004 play The History Boys put it, “just one f****** thing after another”. Rather, as the sixth-century historian and bishop Gregory of Tours began his Historia Francorum (History of the Franks), “A great many things keep happening.” Faced with this truth, should we not stop presenting history as neat, ordered and, as such, unrepresentative of how our forebears experienced it? Ultimately, we cannot preserve the past inside the present. Explorers such as Columbus and rulers such as Charles I or Philip II will eventually be forgotten, just as we will all one day be swept away by the stream of time. Trying to understand this process, not learning dates, is the true art of history. Kings and queens are not innately important; neither are great battles. All things are transient. As the 11–12th-century Persian poet and scientist Omar Khayyam put it, it is far better we “think, in this batter’d caravanserai [a refuge for travellers] whose doorways are alternate night and day; how sultan after sultan with his pomp, abode his hour or two, and went his way”. This article was first published in the November 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
The LAST Anglo-Saxon kings of England | Harold II and the road to 1066
Marc Morris reveals how the powerful Godwin family rose to prominence during the reign of King Edward the Confessor
Best known as the defeated king who reportedly got an arrow through the eye at the Battle of Hastings, Harold II was part of the Godwin family. In the second episode of our series on 1066, Marc Morris reveals how the Godwins were the power behind the throne through much of the reign of Harold’s predecessor, King Edward the Confessor. He explains to David Musgrove why the family came to prominence and how Harold managed to take the crown for himself after King Edward’s death at the start of 1066. Watch now, or listen to the ad-free podcast below: View Green Video on the source website Want to hear more? Browse more episodes in our podcast series on 1066
The VIKING king of England: the story of King Cnut and the Danish conquest of 1016
Marc Morris explores the long roots of the Norman Conquest of 1066
The roots of the Norman Conquest of 1066 can be traced all the way back to 1016 – when England was hit by an earlier foreign invasion. This time, the assault came from Denmark and the forces of Cnut. In the first episode of our new series on 1066, Marc Morris talks to David Musgrove about how the events of the early 11th century set the scene for the Norman invasion half a century later. Watch now, or listen to the ad-free podcast below: View Green Video on the source website Want to hear more? Browse more episodes in our podcast series on 1066
Just how many Bayeux Tapestries were there?
As a new theory, put forward by Professor John Blair, questions whether the embroidery was unique, David Musgrove asks historians whether there could have been more than one ‘Bayeux Tapestry’
The Bayeux Tapestry is an amazing artefact – and it’s exceptional not least because of its very existence today. Precious few pieces of embroidery from the medieval period survive, let alone ones that are almost 70 metres long. And, of course, the story it tells – of the conquest of England by the Normans – is one of immense historical significance. So we rightly celebrate it, and excitement about its forthcoming loan from Bayeux to the British Museum is high. But what if this artefact wasn’t really so very exceptional at the time it was made? What if it was just one of several embroideries produced to commemorate the Norman victory over the English at the battle of Hastings in October 1066? Professor John Blair, an expert in the Anglo-Saxon period at the University of Oxford, believes that might be the case. “This is a reaction against the idea that the Tapestry had to be something extraordinary or unique, beyond the fact that it is an extraordinary and unique survival,” he says. “There are abundant references to decorative domestic hangings, but of course they had virtually zero chance of survival. The Tapestry is a wonderful piece of design, but the actual stitching isn’t particularly fine, and a big team of embroiderers in a workshop could have done it quite expeditiously.” Purported patron Why did the Tapestry survive when so few other embroideries did? Well, most scholars agree that it was probably made some time after the battle that it records, so in the mid-late 11th century, and likely on the orders of – or to curry favour with – Bishop Odo of Bayeux. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/Odo-blessing-the-feast4548webready-e50a4fb.jpg" width="1921" height="1281" alt="Bishop Odo, William’s half-brother, says grace before a feast. It’s thought that Odo commissioned the Tapestry to be displayed in his new cathedral in Bayeux (Image by Bayeux Museum)" title="Bishop Odo, William’s half-brother, says grace before a feast. It’s thought that Odo commissioned the Tapestry to be displayed in his new cathedral in Bayeux (Image by Bayeux Museum)" /> Odo, the half-brother of William the Conqueror, was made Earl of Kent after the conquest. The case for him being the Tapestry’s patron rests on the fact that he plays a particularly prominent role in the embroidery. Additionally, three lower-profile characters called Wadard, Vital and Turold are specifically (and surprisingly, given their status and role in the story) named in the Tapestry. These three men are thought to have been Odo’s followers. Read more | “I counted the penises in the Bayeux Tapestry and I have no regrets”: what one Oxford professor found when he studied the rudest bits of the embroidery One line of thought suggests that the Tapestry was made to be displayed in Odo’s new cathedral in Bayeux on its consecration in 1077. We know nothing of what happened to the embroidery in the four centuries that followed – until the late 15th century, when we have a documentary reference to it in an inventory of that cathedral, noting that it was displayed annually on a specific feast day. It’s possible that the Tapestry survived for such a long time because, except for its annual airing, it was kept in a chest in the church. It therefore wasn’t subjected to the wear and tear of daily display that might have caused other contemporary embroideries to fray and fall apart. One theory even has it that the Tapestry might have been walled up in a crypt below Bayeux Cathedral for centuries. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/GettyImages-2154318346webready-cc73479.jpg" width="5600" height="3733" alt="Bayeux Cathedral, consecrated in 1077 by Bishop Odo but largely reconstructed in the 13th century (Image by Getty Images)" title="Bayeux Cathedral, consecrated in 1077 by Bishop Odo but largely reconstructed in the 13th century (Image by Getty Images)" /> So, if Professor Blair is right in his theory that the uniqueness of the Tapestry rests principally in its survival, what does he think about its original manufacture? Where was it made, by whom – and was it one of a kind? “Since it seems most unlikely that none of the other members of the Norman elite had embroidered hangings representing the Conquest,” he explains, “the possibility struck me that there might have been a set of stock designs, which the workshop then customised for each individual patron: we just happen to have the one made for Odo. “On that argument, the scenes highlighting Odo – the meal before the battle, Odo brandishing his club, and so on – and Odo’s named followers Wadard, Vital and Turold would be insertions into the standard sequence,” he continues. “To take that further would need a closer analysis of design, sequence, correlation with the borders and so on than I have done. But the Wadard scene definitely does have possibilities, since the mounted knight captioned ‘Hic est Wadard’ does rather look as though he has been interposed into a sequence of three houses and three followers.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/3AJKTPH-Doctored-CMYKbrightwebready-1eecbc0.jpg" width="1771" height="1181" alt="Our doctored version of the Tapestry (below) shows how it might have looked without Odo’s follower Wadard (on horseback in the upper, existing iteration), illustrating the idea that he might have been inserted into a stock design on Odo’s orders (Image by Alamy)" title="Our doctored version of the Tapestry (below) shows how it might have looked without Odo’s follower Wadard (on horseback in the upper, existing iteration), illustrating the idea that he might have been inserted into a stock design on Odo’s orders (Image by Alamy)" /> To see how that might have worked, we’ve doctored that section of the Tapestry (above) so that you can compare the original sequence with a version in which the mounted Wadard has been removed. Mass production Gale Owen-Crocker – professor emerita of the University of Manchester, one of the most respected and well-published Tapestry scholars, and author of the forthcoming book The Design of the Bayeux Tapestry – likes the idea. “I am sure that there were workshops making these woollen hangings,” she says. “The workmanship is too assured for the Bayeux Tapestry to be a one-off.” She has previously argued, along with her co-author, Maggie Kneen, that the Tapestry designers employed templates for the motifs and images that were most likely drawn onto the linen cloth as guides for the final stitching by the embroiderers. That, too, accords with Professor Blair’s theory. Read more | The Bayeux Tapestry: a political football for 900 years Manchester Metropolitan University’s Dr Alexandra Makin, an authority on early medieval embroidery and author of The Lost Art of the Anglo-Saxon World, is minded to agree in broad terms: “There’s no denying that the Bayeux Tapestry is an important embroidery, but we have evidence that indicates wall hangings that told stories were a popular way of memorialising the heroic deeds of family members,” she says. “An example is the Byrhtnoth wall hanging that was made by that ealdorman’s wife, Ælfflæd, and possibly other women in the household. It depicted the ‘great deeds’ of the ealdorman, and was given to the monastery at Ely at some point after his death at the battle of Maldon in 991. “Meanwhile, in a poem written by Baudri of Bourgueil to William the Conqueror’s daughter, Adela of Blois, Baudri describes three different wall hangings, one of which is very similar to the Bayeux Tapestry,” she adds. “The way the Bayeux Tapestry’s narrative is set out also brings to mind the woven tapestries found in the ninth-century Oseberg ship burial in Norway, which are thought to tell stories relating to warrior ideology in the Viking world,” Dr Makin continues. “The Bayeux Tapestry sits in a long tradition of telling heroic stories through textiles, so early medieval people were well aware of this and understood what it was telling them. This also suggests that other people could have commissioned embroidered or woven wall hangings to tell their own story of what happened in 1066. Whether these were as big as the Bayeux Tapestry is another question.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/hengteMennv005rework-Credit-Stig-Saxegaard-og-Kulturhistorisk-museumwebready-38495e2.jpg" width="5353" height="3569" alt="A colourful tapestry showing groups of people and a tree-like structure in the middle. On the right, there is a large blue horse. The border at the top and the bottom of the tapestry is blue, with a zigzag pattern on it" title="A reconstruction of a woven tapestry found in the ninth-century Oseberg ship burial in Norway, reflecting the tradition of telling heroic stories through textiles (Image by Stig Saxegaard & Museum of the Viking Age, University of Oslo)" /> According to Dr Makin, the way the embroidery was made lent itself ideally to the purpose for which it was designed. “The materials and stitches used to create the Bayeux Tapestry are perfect for the job,” she says. “They are bold, quick to work, cover the ground fabric easily and would be seen from a distance. This is not a fine piece of work like the 10th-century gold-and-silk embroidered stole, maniple and ribbons found in the tomb of St Cuthbert in Durham Cathedral – but using tiny stitches would not have worked for a wall hanging that was meant to be seen by lots of people at a distance. “When the stitching is examined, its precise execution, and the economical use of thread, demonstrates that the Bayeux Tapestry is an accomplished piece of work,” Dr Makin concludes. “But we simply cannot compare it to pieces made from gold and silk threads. They were meant to do a different job.” Evidence for uniqueness Professor Michael Lewis, another leading Tapestry expert based at the British Museum, is less convinced by Professor Blair’s theory. He contends that Bishop Odo’s presumed key role in the making of the Tapestry actually argues for it being a one-off embroidery: “We know from Domesday Book that Bishop Odo, the Tapestry’s likely patron, was a cultured man with the considerable wealth needed for the creation of a monumental artwork like the Bayeux embroidery,” he says. “Surely it was his unique position as Earl of Kent that also enabled access to the illuminated manuscripts that were evidently used in the Tapestry’s designs. Perhaps he could have granted similar access to other potential patrons – but is that likely or realistic? “Another aspect to consider – key, perhaps – is whether the Tapestry was ever actually used for its original purpose, presumably to be displayed from place to place as an advocacy piece for Odo’s role in the Conquest,” he continues. “The likely period of its creation (1072–77) was within a new political environment in which William was moving towards a more oppressive regime than in the early days of the Conquest. Yet the Tapestry’s story seems to reflect a pre-1070s narrative, with William hoping to bring the English around by more persuasive means. So maybe it was never toured [because it didn’t reflect the newly prevailing narrative] and was unlikely to be emulated.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/ManiplePetertrans1137webready-d304d89.jpg" width="756" height="504" alt="The 10th-century maniple found in the tomb of St Cuthbert in Durham Cathedral exhibits much finer needlework than the Bayeux Tapestry (Image by Stig Saxegaard & Museum of the Viking Age/Bayeux Museum)" title="The 10th-century maniple found in the tomb of St Cuthbert in Durham Cathedral exhibits much finer needlework than the Bayeux Tapestry (Image by Stig Saxegaard og Kulturhistorisk museum/Bayeux Museum)" /> Professor Lewis further wonders whether the scale of the embroidery and, thus, the resources required would have made duplicate versions less likely: “It is true that the Bayeux embroidery uses relatively simple materials – flax for linen, wool for its threads, and plant material as dyes – but its scale, which could have been even larger than its extant 70m, suggests a different level of resources than might have been typical,” he notes. “This has not been explored in any meaningful way, and surely it is an opportunity not to be missed [when the Tapestry is conserved in 2027] for scientifically investigating its materiality?” If Professor Blair’s theory does hold water – and clearly more research is needed to bolster the case – it demands that we consider the Tapestry and its message in a different light. As it stands, the Bayeux Tapestry is a key source for our understanding of the Norman conquest. The narrative it offers, which is at once celebratory for Duke William, conciliatory towards King Harold, and exclusionary of other dimensions to the story – the most obvious omission being Harald Hardrada’s invasion in northern England before Hastings – has had a significant influence on the way we see 1066. If it was only one of a number of similar but different embroideries, then we need to review our interpretative framework, and consider why this particular version showed this particular narrative. Read more | Why the Nazis fell in love with the Bayeux Tapestry “Should this idea turn out to be right, it would emphasise both the sophistication and the complexity of 11th-century life, with major embroideries produced for several aristocratic households on a factory-line basis,” Professor Blair remarks. “When trying to understand material culture in the early Middle Ages, we have to remember what a minute and unrepresentative sample has come down to us.” Hopefully, this article might lead to further research on this interesting theory. In the meantime, if anyone reading happens to be descended from one of the leading Norman families of the 11th century and has an unopened chest lying around, please feel free to have a look – and get in touch if it contains a 70 metres long embroidery. This article was first published in the December 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Michael Wood on women's contributions to the Bayeux Tapestry
"We should remember the unknown women who made the Tapestry", writes Michael Wood
Like all readers, I am sure, I was thrilled to hear the news that the Bayeux Tapestry is coming to England next year. 1066 is the most important date in British history, and the Tapestry is the greatest single source, taking the tale from the last days of Edward the Confessor through the drama of Harold and William, the Norman invasion, and the defeat and death of Harold at Hastings. The Tapestry has been in Bayeux since the Middle Ages and has never left, save briefly during the Franco-German War and under Napoleon and the Nazis, who both sought to weaponise it prior to their own invasion attempts. But it was made in England in the aftermath of the Conquest, probably at Canterbury by English needlewomen. Scholars think that it was commissioned by the Conqueror’s brother Odo, bishop of Bayeux, who features prominently on the Tapestry along with his followers. One of those, Vitalis, is singled out and named, shown mounted and in full armour, reporting to William the whereabouts of the English army. Perhaps he was the leader of a scouting detachment who had gone ahead of the Norman army. Read more | The Bayeux Tapestry is finally coming home to Britain – and you can see it next year The artistic inspiration was the English school of manuscript painting in Canterbury, but there may have been Roman models, too. Trajan’s Column, in particular, depicts the emperor’s Dacian campaigns in a similar manner – like a strip cartoon. Odo himself had been to Rome; so, too, had Scolland, abbot of St Augustine’s Abbey, who may have designed the Tapestry – perhaps using a sketch book from his travels? It’s a huge artwork, some 68.3 metres long, but damaged at the end: perhaps as much as 3 metres is missing. It is generally agreed that the Tapestry originally finished with William’s crowning at Westminster at Christmas 1066 – a mirror image to the opening panel of the enthroned Edward the Confessor. Based on that assumption, a brilliant full-scale reconstruction has been completed by embroiderers on Alderney (alderneybayeuxtapestry.com). It’s thought that the Tapestry was commissioned for the consecration of Bayeux Cathedral in 1077. Art historian Christopher Norton suggests that its original length would perfectly fit the nave of Odo’s new church, along three walls of a rectangular space 31 metres long and 9 metres wide, taking account of doorways and architectural supports. Possibly the first record of the embroidery tells us that, in the 15th century, it was hung in the nave at Bayeux on the feast of the cathedral’s relics, 1 July, and for the following week. By the 18th century, that period stretched from the Feast of John the Baptist on 24 June till the end of July. This gives us a key clue to its original purpose: perhaps it was made specifically to be shown in the cathedral on the relic feast. On the Tapestry, Harold has a bigger role than William, and his story unfolds as a tragedy. Harold’s fate is sealed when he breaks his oath to support William’s claim to the English throne. Before then, he was a great and successful warrior. So he’s portrayed not as a Judas but as a Macbeth – a brave man led by his ambition into disloyalty. It is possible that his fateful oath was actually sworn on the cathedral’s relics at Bayeux. If the Tapestry was dedicated by Odo to his cathedral, then the part of the relics in the story is central. Read more | “I counted the penises in the Bayeux Tapestry and I have no regrets”: what one Oxford professor found when he studied the rudest bits of the embroidery We know nothing of the women who made it. Yet we do know that the work of Old English needlewomen was later prized abroad as opus Anglicanum, ‘English work’. We know that Earl Byrhtnoth, the hero of the battle of Maldon in 991, was depicted on a tapestry hung in Ely Abbey (now Ely Cathedral) that perhaps also commemorated the faithful retainers named in the famous Old English poem. And even middling people had embroideries in their houses depicting heroic or biblical scenes, which provided richly coloured decoration and acted as draught-proofing. In her will from the 940s, a woman called Wynflaed gives her friend her “long hall tapestry”, which must have been a fine heirloom. So much bigger in scale, the Bayeux Tapestry was commissioned by a rich and powerful person at the top of society. As for its actual makers, it is only later in the Middle Ages that we start to learn the names of some of the women who created such wonderful works of art that were prized across Europe. So when we stand in front of the Tapestry next year, and take in the immense drama of the Conquest, we should also remember the unknown women who made it: the likes (let’s imagine) of Eadgyth of Sittingbourne and Ælfflæd of Whitstable. Now, they would have a story to tell. This column was first published in the September 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
The wrong moustache in the Battle of Hastings
What's going on with the facial hair in King and Conqueror, have we been suckered in by an overly literal understanding of the Bayeux Tapestry, and what did a Viking beard really look like?
How and why did they get the facial hair so wrong in the new BBC 1066 drama King and Conqueror, and what did an actual Viking look like on the hair and beard front? Find out in my in-depth analysis of moustache-gate, framed, as is my wont, in the context of the Bayeux Tapestry. The new 1066 drama King and Conqueror has been accused by numerous commentators of playing fast and loose with the historical narrative of the Norman Conquest. That’s a reasonable criticism, but on my assessment of the critiques of the series, the deepest opprobrium has been reserved for the facial hair fantasy. Dad tache or bad tache? The problem is that Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, as Duke William of Normandy, sports a bristling tache (memorably described by Lucy Mangan in the Guardian as a ‘1970s dad tache’ and in the Daily Mail as an Asterix look), while the upper lip of James Norton’s Harold Godwinson is unequivocally hairless. That, as many experts have pointed out, is directly at odds with the Bayeux Tapestry. The famous 11th-century embroidery, which provides the earliest visual representation of the 1066 story, quite clearly shows a moustachioed Harold and a clean-shaven William. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/528361-7b9d210.jpg" width="6224" height="4672" alt="A man with shaggy hair and a moustache stands on a beach, dressed in a dark cloak and holding a sword. Behind him, a small group of people gather around a wooden boat on the shoreline" title="William bosses the beach with his 1970s dad tache in King and Conqueror (Image by BBC/CBS Studios)" /> Harold’s facial hair in the Tapestry is in line with that of his Anglo-Saxon compatriots: they tend to (but don’t always) boast moustaches, some of which are thin and straggly, while others are impressive handlebar efforts. The Normans, on the other hand, lack upper lip action. The embroiderers were clearly following a style guide to try to offer a visual prompt to the viewer about which side the respective figures were on. Menacing reverse mullet It wasn’t just moustaches in the Tapestry that helped viewers to know who was on which team – the haircuts also offered a clue. The Normans often had curious shaved necks, which, in the words of the great Tapestry scholar Professor Gale Owen-Crocker were ‘sometimes accompanied by a menacing lock of hair at the forehead’, or a ‘reverse mullet’ as Dr Thomas Williams has fabulously described it. The English generally had a decidedly less scary bowl-cut bob sort of look going on. This was significant because one of the things with the Bayeux Tapestry is that it doesn’t give you very much information in the captions to describe what’s occurring and who is doing what, so you needed these visual hints to keep up with the story. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/GettyImages-moustach-Harold815687404-ddc875b.jpg" width="3543" height="2753" alt="A scene from the Bayeux Tapestry depicts a group of men sitting at a high table under a red, yellow and green canopy. Around them, there are animals" title="Anglo-Saxons feasting and drinking with their big Bayeux Tapestry taches (Image by Getty Images)" /> Read more | Shakespeare didn't do the Norman Conquest, but the Bayeux Tapestry did, so where does that leave the BBC's King and Conqueror? Aside from the moustache debacle, King and Conqueror doesn’t, for my money, capture the spirit of the Bayeux Tapestry with the barnets either. Norton’s haircut isn’t quite dorky enough, and Coster-Waldau’s isn’t really as shavenly intimidating as it ought to be. Maybe Luther Ford’s Tostig Godwinson gets closest to a Tapestry look with his bowl-cut (though Tostig himself does not specifically appear in the embroidery, so I’m generalising about the Anglo-Saxon vibe). I haven’t seen any explanation in the crew interviews for the TV series for this obvious diversion from the historical facial hair facts. However, I do note that Norton had originally hoped to play William. His plan, apparently, was scuppered by a contractual obligation with HBO that he could only appear in King and Conqueror if his character died. That legal stipulation ruled out the option of him appearing as the Norman Duke, who does not die at Hastings, and left him little choice but to take on the ill-fated Harold instead, who famously does. So maybe they just forgot who was supposed to grow the tache after that. Manly strength, modernity and bravery I do understand this level of moustache anxiety, particularly in these days of hipster facial hair. I’m reminded of a great HistoryExtra article from the eminent beard historian Dr Alun Withey on moustache matters. He said, “Like many other facial hair styles, the moustache has a long and complicated history. In some periods it has symbolised manly strength, modernity and bravery; in others it was decried as an affectation of fey young men. It’s easy to write facial hair off as something that is quirky or irrelevant, but it often tells us a very great deal about individual men across time, as well as shifting attitudes towards masculinity and the male body.” Having established the importance of facial hair, I’m surprised that not many people have been exercised by the chin of Eddie Marsan’s Edward the Confessor in King and Conqueror. Marsan’s simpering mother-beaten monarch is very different from the Bayeux Tapestry version, because the embroidered king wears a long flowing beard. I know Marsan can grow facial hair because he was bearded in his depiction of noted canoe conman John Darwin in an ITV drama a few years ago, so again, the King and Conqueror team have apparently made a deliberate decision to ignore the evidential pogonotrophy of the Bayeux Tapestry. I can only assume that they figured Marsan with a beard wouldn’t look as weak-willed as they wanted his King Edward to be. Someone who is clearly tooled up to look intimidating in King and Conqueror is the Norwegian King Harald Hardrada, played by Sveinn Ólafur Gunnarsson. He is resplendent with a big brash beard that Brian Blessed would be proud of. Hardrada’s invasion, accompanied by King Harold’s disaffected brother Tostig, is the preliminary story to the Norman Conquest (and if you want the full story, watch my chat with Marc Morris all about it on the HistoryExtra YouTube channel). Harold’s victory over his brother and the mighty Hardrada at the battle of Stamford Bridge would have been the stuff of legend if it wasn’t overshadowed by his own defeat and death a few days later at the hands of William and the Normans at Hastings. The Tapestry devotes zero attention to the Hardrada story so we cannot say whether the King and Conqueror depiction of a big beardy Viking is accurate. Actual Viking facial hair evidence However, and this is breaking news, an archaeologist at the National Museum of Denmark, Peter Pentz, has just published some research on a remarkable Viking period figurine, which gives us a very rare glimpse of what a Viking hair style actually looked like. Granted it’s from the 10th century rather than the 11th, and obviously sartorial trends can move fast, but nevertheless, it’s a good insight. The little figurine, currently on display in the Viking Sorceress exhibition at the museum in Copenhagen, has a middle parting with a side wave that leaves the ear visible, while the hair has been cropped at the back. Plus he’s got a large moustache, a long, braided goatee and sideburns. It’s some look, and according to Peter Pentz, it’s quite a find: “Hitherto, we haven’t had any detailed knowledge about Viking hairstyles, but here, we get all the details – even the little curl above the ear is marked. This is the first time we see a figure of a male Viking with his hair visible from all angles. It’s unique”. Hardrada, in King and Conqueror, isn’t quite aligned with this Viking look, given that he has a full beard rather than tache, goatee and sideburns, but this research has only just come to light, so we can let the producers of the series off on that one at least. Read more | How historically accurate is King and Conqueror? Here’s the real history that should have happened What’s interesting, I think, is to dwell briefly on whether we are reading far too much into these Bayeux Tapestry haircuts and moustache designs. Might perhaps we better assume that the designer and embroiders were simply trying to remind the viewers about who was English and who was Norman, as I mentioned above, and not really be attempting to represent the hairy reality of the day? As the noted scholar of Old English Dr Thijs Porck pointed out in this excellent blog post a few years ago, the early 11th-century Anglo-Saxon religious writer, Ælfric of Eynsham, had cause to write a letter of complaint, admonishing his fellow monks for adorning themselves ‘in Danish fashion, with bared neck and blinded eyes’. That shaved back of neck and hair flopping over the eyes sounds quite a lot like the Norman look in the Bayeux Tapestry, and not dissimilar to what we can see in the Viking figurine. So maybe both the Anglo-Saxons and the Normans were trying to look scarily Viking in the 11th century, and the Tapestry has slipped us a red herring by making out that the two groups adopted different hair styles. Maybe moustache-gate is simply an overly-literal reading of the embroidery. As Marc Morris has noted, however, there is other documentary evidence besides the Tapestry to suggest that there were stylistic differences in hair and face between Normans and English. William of Poitiers recorded how the French and Normans 'looked with curiosity' at the long-haired English hostages that the Conqueror brought home with him in 1067, and other sources do point to the Normans being clean-shaven and the English wearing facial hair. One final point on faces, moustaches and hair is this: quoting Professor Owen-Crocker once more, ‘No-one ever looks happy in the Bayeux Tapestry’. The range of facial expressions in the embroidery are limited, though Harold does look notably downtrodden when he’s making his famous oath in the presence of Duke William in Bayeux. So, if we’re being picky about facial hair and divergence from the Tapestry, we ought also to criticise King and Conqueror for allowing its characters to smile on occasion, because that really isn’t in the spirit of the embroidery. If you want to know more about the Bayeux Tapestry, feel free to have a scan of <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-Bayeux-Tapestry-Unravelling-Conquest/dp/0500297657/ref=sr_1_1?crid=36VNPUZVD7AT0&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.MMpoBk9Uovbmr3TEL7v4h5yCcHHB7TibT_bIrEGBOBxY2Pe3qyULcF9azzUe6FSS77dBGNHt1jXTxYq4ZklhYwbTl0vPLrwYXklZE3_uXH7g1YMSgVfU06y_VHZZkn57MW1kw48WMMOmwhS-d_wuHIBjqgzxJOdyiDL2g6zJrYe7mf3Joj6Mhuu-i1x8EDFrhQ6EEihQAOCndaf5Z0YMQXFMhbJ8bz6lOmHeW7nnRG8.LiqZZPaTMKhqXNti1OiwZBLnizdALx5kanimdfEvyVM&dib_tag=se&keywords=story+of+the+bayeux+tapestry&qid=1756389351&s=books&sprefix=story+of+the+bayeux+tapestry%2Cstripbooks%2C68&sr=1-1&tag=bbchistory045-21&ascsubtag=historyextra-288879" rel="sponsored" target="_blank">The Story of the Bayeux Tapestry, by myself and Professor Michael Lewis. This article is part of HistoryExtra's new Life Lessons from History Substack newsletter. Subscribe to the newsletter for more articles and podcasts exploring the ways in which history can help us live better, happier, healthier or more productive lives.
Far away from England, the mystery of Harold Godwinson's lost crown might have just been solved
New research into the history of a long-lost Belgian church suggests that something very precious may have been sold to fund its upkeep
Overlooking Bruges’ market square and a few hundred metres away from the neo-Gothic Provincial Palace stands a popular chain hotel, providing accommodation for some of the millions of tourists that visit the Belgian city each year. Looking at this unremarkable redbrick building, it’s hard to imagine that on the same site, an important place of worship once towered over this historic metropolis: the medieval St Donatian’s Church. And a new detail that has emerged from the archives of the church leads us to consider something even harder to imagine: could the crown of England’s last Anglo-Saxon king, Harold Godwinson, have been sold to pay for its upkeep? A church of sanctuary and sacrilege St Donatian’s church – named after the fourth-century French saint, Donatian – was established around AD 950 by Arnulf I, the count of Flanders. Prior to its destruction during the French Revolutionary Wars, the church was a college of canons, built to hold relics of St Donatian brought to Bruges from Torhout (a municipality in West Flanders) in around 870. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/08/PublicDomainsander-WL-45d2aa1.jpg" width="800" height="534" alt="A sketch of a beige church with many arched windows and a tower in the centre. It has a grey roof and many smaller buildings around it too. In the corner, there is a label reading "ECCLESIA CATHEDRALIS S. DONATIANI"" title="An illustration of St Donatian's in Flandria Illustrata, 1641 (Public domain)" /> Today, the church is best-known for being the scene of the brutal murder of another Flemish count, Charles the Good, who was attacked by a group of knights in 1127. Lesser-known, however, is the fact that the place of worship also played a significant role in the exile of Lady Gunhild – sister of the last Anglo-Saxon king, Harold Godwinson. Read more | Shakespeare didn't do the Norman Conquest, but the Bayeux Tapestry did, so where does that leave the BBC's King and Conqueror? The church became Gunhild’s final resting place, and recent research by Elisabeth van Houts, emeritus honorary professor of medieval history at the University of Cambridge, suggests that it may have greatly benefited from the spoils of the Norman Conquest. A family in exile It is one of the most famous tales in English history, detailed on the Bayeux Tapestry and depicted in BBC drama King and Conqueror: William of Normandy’s defeat of Harold Godwinson at the battle of Hastings. It fundamentally changed England’s political and social landscape, bringing with it a new language, new power structures and the eventual creation of the first national survey, Domesday Book. Harold was killed in the fighting, as was his brother, Tostig Godwinson, at the preceding battle of Stamford Bridge. But what happened to Harold’s surviving family after the Norman Conquest? The dramatic events of 1066 didn’t just end the Anglo-Saxon era and Harold’s life – they scattered his relatives across Europe. The king’s sister, Gunhild, and their mother, Gytha, fled England for Saint-Omer in Flanders, with Gunhild later moving on to Bruges. In 1786, almost 700 years after her death, the tomb of Gunhild was uncovered in St Donatian’s Church. Her tomb included a burial plaque alongside a long Latin obituary detailing her life in exile. Such details reveal that Gunhild lived a pious and simple existence in Bruges, where “she was abstained from all pleasures” and “did not eat anything that seemed sweet to her but instead took only enough to stay alive”. From this description, you would be forgiven for thinking that Gunhild lived in poverty, but in reality, she was still extremely wealthy. Indeed, the only contemporary document to discuss Gunhild, Domesday Book, reveals her vast riches, indicating that she “held the income of four manors, one in Sussex and three in Somerset, comprising approximately 30 hides, giving her an annual income of just under £30”. Much of this wealth would have been confiscated and redistributed by the Norman invaders, but Gunhild once again came into money upon her mother’s death. According to Elisabeth van Houts, “we can get some idea of [the size of Gunhild’s wealth] from the archive of St Donatian, which in the 14th century kept records of her bequest of gold and silver to the canons”. Read more | How well did Harold Godwinson and William the Conqueror know each other prior to the battle of Hastings? Given that the bequest was still being written about some 300 years after Gunhild’s death suggests that it was clearly of great importance. So much so, in fact, that the canons of the late 11th century had even buried Gunhild in the church as a sign of their gratitude. Relic in the roof? So – why were the canons so thankful for this bequest in particular? Van Houts’ research suggests that some of the gifts were no less than crown jewels. According to records from 1389, “the sale of certa jocalia (‘certain jewels’ or ‘precious objects’) given by Lady Gunhild for the repair of the church’s roof, vault and choir” were approved by the Bishop of Tournai. Antonius Schoonhoven – a canon of St Donatian’s – concluded that in Gunhild’s bequests, there “were among others an imperial crown (corona augustalis) and many works of the best authors richly ornamented”. In other words, the crown of Gunhild’s brother, Harold, may well have been bequeathed to the canons of St Donatian’s before being sold to fund vital works on the church. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/08/3BEHX1J-Harold-WL-3f1fcc8.jpg" width="1910" height="1273" alt="An illustration showing a king dressed in red with a blue robe sitting on a throne, holding a crown on his head. Around him, there are a group of men dressed in green, red and blue, talking to each other" title="A 13th-century manuscript illustration shows Harold Godwinson being crowned as King of England, a pivotal moment in English history (Image by Alamy)" /> We may never know the truth of the matter, but as Van Houts points out, “monastic houses acted as banks providing loans and mortgages from the 11th century… [and] the canons of St Donatian at Bruges would have expected to receive charitable donations from the English noblewomen”. Therefore, it is possible that Gunhild gifted the canons these precious possessions not merely as a sign of gratitude, but because she was expected to do so. Yet even if we don’t know the exact circumstances, the items would have likely been of huge personal value to Gunhild – both financially and emotionally. Historians have long speculated on what happened to Harold’s crown after the battle of Hastings, and there are no known confirmed records of its whereabouts beyond 1066. However, this insight into Gunhild’s fate after 1066 raises the tantalising possibility that it might have ended up with her in Bruges, rather than finding its way into the hands of the Normans. View Green Video on the source website King and Conqueror is streaming on BBC iPlayer now. For more content like this, check out the best historical movies of all time as chosen by historians and ranked by you, history TV shows and films to stream tonight, and our picks of the new history TV and radio released in the UK this week
Life of the Week: Harold Godwinson (Harold II)
Caitlin Ellis explores the biography of the short-lived medieval king best known for getting an arrow to the eye at the battle of Hastings
King Harold II is famous for getting an arrow to the eye at the battle of Hastings. But is that story even true? And what else should we know about this man whose main claim to fame is being defeated by William the Conqueror? In this Life of the Week episode, David Musgrove explores the life of the king commonly known as Harold Godwinson, with Caitlin Ellis, associate professor in medieval nordic history at Oslo University. View Green Video on the source website