You're Dead to Me - The Bayeux Tapestry

Episode Date: June 24, 2022

Greg Jenner is joined by special guests Dr Janina Ramirez and Lou Sanders in 11th-century Europe to take a close look at the Bayeux Tapestry. They explore the history of this famous artefact which is in fact, not a tapestry at all! Who commissioned it, and more importantly who made it and where? Is the famous image of the death of Harold II accurate or have we been missing another part of the picture? What are the often overlooked margins of the Bayeux Tapestry trying to tell us and above all, how on earth has this extraordinary piece of history survived all these years?You’re Dead To Me is a production by The Athletic for BBC Radio 4.Research by John Mason Written and produced by Emma Nagouse and Greg Jenner Assistant Producer: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow Project Management: Siefe Miyo Audio Producer: Abi Paterson

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author, broadcaster and former nerd on the BBC comedy show Horrible Histories. public historian, author, broadcaster and former nerd on the BBC comedy show Horrible Histories. And today we are travelling back nearly a thousand years to 11th century Western Europe to dive into the rich tapestry of tapestries. The Bayeux tapestry, to be exact.

Except it's not a tapestry. I'll explain later. To help us learn more about everyone's favourite medieval craft project, I am joined by two very special guests. In History Corner, she's an art historian, broadcaster and author and fellow at the University of Oxford to boot. You may have seen her many fabulous BBC history documentaries or read her books, including recent hit Goddess and also her upcoming book, Femina, about the women written out of history. And of course, you'll remember her from our episode on Old Norse literature. What a hoot that was. It's

the wonderful Dr. Janina Ramirez. Welcome back, Nina. Hello, Greg. I am delighted to be back. And in Comedy Corner, she's one of Britain's funniest comedians, writers, podcasters and panel show queens who you will recognise from her acclaimed stand-up shows and countless TV appearances like Live at the Apollo, 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown and Mel Gedroych's Unforgivable. Plus, she's a Taskmaster Champion, so a proper brain. She's a one-of-a-kind in the best possible way. It's Lou Sanders. Hello, Lou. Hello. Equally pleased to be on here about a subject I don't know a lot about, but that's why I'm here. It would waste my time if I was an expert in it, wouldn't it?

Well, we wouldn't book you if you were. I mean, it wouldn't be as fun. You'd just tell us some stuff and we'd go home. uh so the format relies on you I've seen a bit of carpet before so treat me as one of your own and Lou how are you with history do you enjoy it as a subject did you enjoy it at school I liked social history I don't like times and dates I don't like times and dates generally because I can't get it, like I can't get a hold of it in my head. But I like, you know, the Black Plague. I love the Black Plague.

It's everyone's favourite. No, no. I like how history affected people. We're all about the social history on this show, so that sounds excellent. And have you heard of the Bayeux Tapestry? It rings the vaguest of bells. Is it a man blowing a trumpet or something like that? Is it a boy with a flute?

There's no flute as far as I'm aware. So we might have to show you some, I think, Lou, maybe to give you a brief introduction. But we'll be talking today about the tapestry as an artwork. Often people talk about it as a sort of historical source for war and battle, but we'll be talking about how it was made and by whom. So, what do you know? So, this is the So What Do You Know? This is where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener, might know about today's subject.

And if you're in the UK, I think you've probably heard of the Bayeux Tapestry. You might think there are flutes in it like Lou, but you might be picturing pointy men with pointy helmets on pointy horses doing pointy killing on a sort of yellowy brown background. You may, even though it depicts the famously decisive Battle of Hastings in 1066, in which William, Duke of Normandy, defeated the English King Harold Gobinson and killed him dead and thus became King William the Conqueror, the first of the Norman kings. And, well, I mean, the tapestry itself, aesthetically, it pops up loads in pop

culture, particularly on greeting cards and t-shirts and internet memes, and even on the branding of a certain funny history podcast. This one. Yes, that's what our inspiration is for our artwork. It's even in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves. Maid Marian is seen stitching it at one point, which definitely did not happen. But even if you recognise the style,

you may not know much about the tapestry itself. In fact, it's not even a tapestry. So let's find out some more about what is it and who made it and why. Lou, bearing in mind the Bayeux Tapestry is nearly 1,000 years old, how big do you think it is now it's probably a big boy otherwise why all the fuss so it's probably fitting across one wall the walls in the olden times probably were a bit shorter yeah so a short i'm gonna go with a short wall. A short wall's length, which is what? 10 metres? 5 metres? What do you think?

Well, you said 10 metres. So I'm going to go 8. Well, you might be surprised by this. It's nearly 70 metres long. Oh, I'm a gog. I'm absolutely a gog. You look a gog. That doesn't happen a lot.

That's a lot of work, isn't it? It's a lot of work. It's 68.4 metres long, but it's not entirely finished because we're missing a part of it. So it wouldn't be longer. It's about 50 centimetres wide. So it's a very, very long strip, but it's actually not tall, if that makes sense. Yeah. I told you it wasn't tall because they didn't have...

I already told you that. Obviously, your flute reference is perhaps drawn from something else. Oh yeah, I call flutes knives. That's the thing about me. So you eat your dinner with a flute and fork, right? Yeah, I eat my dinner with a flute and fork. So maybe we should show you a little bit of it so you can get your head around it. So producer Abby's going to show you a little a little scrolling action oh that's that's lovely oh hang on i have seen this before yeah i've seen this before is it at thought park

no but i'm sure it's in my consciousness somewhere so producer abby is scrolling through a lot oh hang on scroll back scroll back what's that instrument there next to the washing basket what's he holding a golf club they're actually kebabs a kebab and a fight nothing's changed so this is a fantastically amazing artwork lou that is uh really important and very very important for historians to understand 1066 and the Battle of Hastings. But today we're going to talk about it as an artwork in terms of its creation and we want to celebrate what it is to make a beautiful thing. So Nina, can you put us out of our misery? Because actually it's called the Bayeux Tapestry, but it's not a tapestry, which is quite

confusing. It's got a few names. In France, it's called La Tapestry de la Reine Mathilde, which means the tapestry of the Queen Mathilde. That's not right either. And it probably wasn't made in Bayeux. So why is it called the Bayeux Tapestry? Can you give us some basics, please? There are major questions we'd ask of any artwork. Who made it? Where was it made? Where was it first displayed? Who ordered it to be made? And really, we can't answer any of those. When I was taught about it, it literally was as if it was a text, you know, what happened in 1066? Who did what? Let's read the Bayeux Tapestry and see if it matches up with the articles. But it's not how it should be considered. It's a work of art. It's not a tapestry. And it wasn't made in Bayer it should be called probably

the Canterbury or the Barking embroidery embroidery is stitches on linen tapestries woven on a loom it wasn't made by Queen Matilda despite it was called the fact it was called La Tapestrie de Reine Mathilde the person who's most likely to have commissioned it is, in fact, William's stepbrother, Odo of Bayer. And one of the things we can answer recently, just a really recent study, has proved it was probably hung in the nave of Bayer Cathedral. And it is massive, Lou. I mean, 70 metres long is huge. But what art historians have discovered by looking at it is there's a tiny little cross in the middle. But what art historians have discovered by looking at it is there's a tiny little cross in the middle. So it's a bit like an Ikea flat pack, you know, start at this point, pin it up and then you can work the rest of it out.

Oh, wow. But that's only been discovered recently. And there's still so many other things that I've been working on and we can talk about, but particularly the role of women. Yeah. Making it, basically. Making it. Well, because historically this is understood to be like a document about men doing man things war mostly battles it shows the famous battle of hastings loo which you may have heard of oh 1066 that one's in there yeah yeah yeah good which was where william defeated and killed harold gobbinson king of england and so william becomes william the

concrete he was the first norman king of england and there's quite a lot of backstory on this Lou and um I'm guessing you don't know the backstory do you have you do you know anything about William and Harold well I would have learned it at a time and then I would have thought this isn't relevant to my life today and just popped it out you know you just scooped it out the brain yeah yeah don't need that all right well in that case maybe we need ourselves a super speedy i mean you know the beginning of american tv shows that are like previously on yeah we'll have one of those i think nina can we have a previously on bio tapestry there is a real issue going on in england around the year 1066 edward the confessor is king but he doesn't have any children so there's a succession

crisis but he's married to this woman called Edith and she is part of this family the Godwin family who have managed over the decades before to basically take over all the kingdoms in England and Harold Godwinson is there trying to make a play for the Crown of England. What the Bayer Tapestry shows is before Edward has died, Harold has gone across the Channel and he has been captured by one of the Counts, Gaia Portue, and then William, Duke of Normandy, descended from Rollo the Viking. He finds out Harold's in town, goes and grabs him, makes him swear relics and loyalty to him, makes him go on different campaigns with him.

Then, back September, we're in England. Edward has died. And on his deathbed, they say, he says, Harold will be my successor. Harold takes the throne, but he's already made this promise to William, apparently. And that leads to all hell breaking loose. William's like, right, we're going to do the undoable.

We're going to cross the Channel with hundreds of boats and we're going to conquer England. And that's what the tapestry shows you. Wow. OK. It's pretty busy. And what's the result? The result is you speak French. Un petit peu.

C'est vrai. Moi,. Ah! Un petit peu. C'est vrai. Ah! Moi, je parle français un petit peu. Oh! C'est très joli. Oui, oui. Oh, bibliothèque. Oui, oui.

C'est ça, c'est ça. The tapestry, Lou, is really famous because, A, it's a gorgeous artwork, but also as a historical document, it tells us the story of Harold getting shipwrecked, getting rescued by William, who sort of gets him out of jail and then takes him on campaign and makes him swear a sacred oath saying, I'm going to be king of England, not you. Right. And Harold goes, yeah, sure, whatever. Just let me go. And then we get Edward the Confessor dying, Harold becoming king and the invasion and the death at the end. So people have, Nina, they've described it as a sort of comic book it is like a comic book it's one of these things that you know one of the reasons we think it might

be in Canterbury is because a lot of the art they were making at this time is sort of text and image sort of layered up on top of each other like a comic book I also like to think of it a bit as a role of film like cinematic film because it's so long and thin and honestly like when you stand in front of it and it fills up the whole of the room and you stand in front of bits of it and it is like being in a movie like the ships are sort of sailing towards you you can see the horses kind of tumbling out of the frames it really feels like you're watching a movie oh yeah that's nice and if you moved it while you're watching it get someone to sort of pull it from one end that is a movie

really abby do you want to pull it for us for a second whoa yeah look at it just like a roll of film so we are scrolling along here actually making me dizzy but it is nice each scene just turns into the next scene without there being kind of obvious stopping points if you look at the battle scenes when you get further along the margins start to break up and the action spills out into the margins so can you see all the dead bodies and the decapitated bodies that like fallen out into the frame so again it's like the drama's just burst out and look at that horse tipping upside down i mean that's like action happening in front of your eyes this is a beautiful piece of artwork,

but in many ways it functions as the kind of way we tell stories today. Visually, it's great. Well, Greg, I just wanted to say a picture tells a thousand words. That's all. We're all thinking it. Someone's got to say it. I think it's about time we acknowledge that and then we can move on. Now, there's also a very famous scene in the tapestry, Lou, that shows the death of King Harold.

Do you know that moment? I wouldn't think so, no. How do you think he might die? Well, I think stabbed in the eye. Is that someone else? No, no, you're pretty clear. I mean, so famously, the tapestry has often been said to show that there's an arrow in the eye. So you are right.

Oh, OK. It is an eye related injury in fact we can see it right now if abby zooms in can you see the arrow in the eye oh yeah but it looks like he's doing it to himself self-inflicted wound he's trying to get compensation have you been injured exactly he's trying to give himself a little nasty injury on the face so he can claim money this is the famous death that many people will know. They will know Harold getting an arrow in the eye. And indeed, it's a joke on our artwork for our podcast.

Nina, we don't think the arrow in the eye is true, right? I'm going to say no, because the evidence is mounting up that no, it's not that iconic image. I mean, the reality is that that's probably not Harold at all. So what happens on the Bay of Tapestry is there's all these wonderful inscriptions on the top and the inscriptions are like the captions for the comic so it says here Harold is killed and the guy with the arrow in the eye his head's underneath the beginning of the word where it says Harold and everyone's always been like oh great you can frame that Harold face but the reality is that most of the time the end of the inscription is where the person is actually doing the action so if you look at it Harold Interfectus Est

the Est is hovering above this guy who's lying on the floor having his leg hacked off oh god yeah right so the earlier source that describes what actually happened at the Bay of Tapestry describes nothing about an arrow, nothing about an eye. It says that four different Norman knights, one of them bashed him to the ground, one chopped his head off, one slashed his leg off, and another took a spear and swirled up his entrails with it. And that's what happened to Harold.

The later idea of the arrow in the eye was probably invented in the sort of 12th century sources like 100 200 years later where it was seen as a symbol for somebody who broke a promise a perjurer they get an arrow in the eye as their just desserts so what's happened is you see that guy with the arrow in the eye when they started looking at it that wool used to stitch the arrow is not 11th century it's 19th century someone stitched it in later that guy originally was holding a spear and you can see where they picked out the spear stuck the arrow in and said yeah that's pretty good that's what you should get if you've broken an oath so it's not Harold at all yeah conspiracy Lou what do you think yeah myth busting all over the place okay it's back to my phrase it's not always Harold

yeah yeah it's one of your best catchphrases yeah I'll pop up with these catchphrases here and again yeah that's the thing about history it's it's sometimes not very accurate but we like a story don't we that's the problem the story's getting away the facts sometimes and what do you prefer do you prefer a story or a fact i like to know the facts but i do prefer a story because you can't learn the fact without a story you have to have a starting point and the story is often the starting point and then you can learn the tree very wise oh woman after my own heart we have a comic book then of sorts a medieval version a visual artifact this gorgeous piece of art i mean lou this is a type of art known as opus anglicanum, which is Latin for... Yeah, I know.

Oh no, I said I know too quick. Now I don't know what it means. What do you think it means in English? Arts and crafts. Pretty good. Not far off, Nina. Yeah, that's really, that's pretty good. We'd say that it's craftwork now, wouldn't we? And that kind of makes it feel smaller in a way,

like a little lady stitching. And it's not like, you know, an artist in his studio creating great canvases. But it is. It's craftwork. And Opus Anglicanum was the making of these embroideries, these beautiful pieces of material, like high fashion. Think about kind of catwalks today and how much the clothes cost on it. and how much the clothes cost on it. The best nuns in England were making the finest garments for the most expensive people, rich people. Yeah, top nuns making top fashion

and they're stitching it with gold and they're stitching it with silk and pearls and everyone's looking very bling. But that's what Opus Anglicanum is, the things that these women were specialised in making. They were haute couture of the 10th and 11th century. Wow. Lou, have you ever done any embroidery?

Are you a craftsperson? And how would you go about making a 70 metre embroidery? Well, I'd outsource it. That's such a good answer.'m gonna use that but no i i would like to learn how to make clothes i suppose but i haven't um i haven't thus far i've got a sewing machine so that's step one i've had it for about a year and a half and it's not threaded yet but i will get around to it okay mark my words all right so the tapestry is coming in due course yeah and not tapestry but maybe maybe a boob tube or something the bio boob tube would be great but um yeah yeah so nina all right talk us through then how is something like this made because it's enormous it's 70 meters long

and it's beautiful so what is the actual crafts process well the reason i was so happy with lou's answer about outsourcing it is because essentially that's what the blokes did. So they outsourced it to the nuns, probably the nuns of barking. Wow. It probably took between about two to three years to make. They worked on it in sections. And the first section, when they started off, they were a little bit rusty.

They weren't really sure what they were doing they never probably never done a project of this scale and it was 14 meters long 14 meters of linen and you'd have all the women sat shoulder to shoulder holding it up you know on frames trying to stitch it and that's a huge exercise the only people that could do that women in close kind of contact with each other for a long period of time were nuns. And I like to call it a mistress piece, not a masterpiece. That's the guerrilla girls came up with that. But what probably happened is the head of the Abbey in Canterbury, Scotland, he'd come over from Normandy and he was, you know, Mr. Bibliophile. He'd looked up all the books. got all the images together put them all

onto cartoons onto like pictures that could be sent to the nuns and then they were the outsourced labour but they had a bit more freedom when it came to the margins I think it's in the margins where you see the women artists really going for it and showing off their their individuality and their skill yeah do they get paid for it you think oh do you know what they got paid with not being killed oh right almost every other monastery and convent was either destroyed had all its possessions taken was taken over put in other hands barking and canterbury they kind of were making like a play for like don't don't kill us we're brilliant we're really talented why don't we work for you instead you're the the new lords. We'll work for you.

So they secured their survival, basically. Who do we think commissioned it? You know, we've talked about men designing it, but who's paying for it? Who wants it? Well, the obvious answer is Odo Beyer. I don't know, Abby, if you can show Lou the scene where he sat around the table with all his his followers and he looks like jesus at the last supper oh that's the guy he's done that yeah he's he's done it he's

like i'm number one i'm the most important person and you know this is the kent connection because i know you and greg both have a kent connection odo was given the county of Kent. That's what he was given by his brother after the conquest. He owns the county and he owns Canterbury and all the important and rich places that come with that. So the most likely candidate is Odo. But there is another candidate and that's a woman. So I don't know if you want me to go on to that, Greg. Oh, I don't think Greg minds you talking about a woman. Well, I don't know.

We've already got two women today and it feels like a lot of women. So maybe more Mancha. No, go on then. Let's hear about the other possible candidate. Let's hear about Edith. Let's hear about this nice little lady. Little lady. There's only a couple in history, aren't there?

Women weren't in history. The other candidate is Edith the Confessor's wife, Edith. You remember that I said that Edith the Confessor was married to Harold's sister? Yeah. Now poor old Edith has an awful time. The two battles that take place in 1066,

she loses all her relatives. Everyone's dead. Oh boy. Loses her brother, loses her husband. She has a bad year. But she has to then get on side with the new guy, William. William arrives. He's like, now I'm king of England.

And she's the old widow. So one thing William could do is just kill her off, get rid of her because she's a pain. But she actually manages to insinuate herself into his new world, into his new court. Wow. Yeah. And she, as the old queen,

would have been in control of the Abbey at Barking. And we know that the nuns at Barking put William up while his house was being built at Tower of London. They said and stay with us William we love you you're fantastic so I think there's a really good strong claim for the fact that it could have been Edith who commissioned it to get on the right side of the Normans oh okay yeah clever old Edith it gets deeper and deeper doesn't it yeah but that's a tough gig isn't it? I mean, you're basically working with a man who just killed your brother. Your whole family, yeah. Yeah, it's great to have you here.

And thanks so much for murdering my family and their loved ones. But yeah, sure. It's a testament to the will of the ego to want to carry on after everyone's dead. But yeah, good on her. Yeah, and she's a candidate. I mean, so I think most historians would say Odo is the most likely candidate. And there's a couple of reasons for that, Lou. One is that we see him fighting in the battle and he's very prominent.

He looks very heroic. And bishops weren't meant to go to war, Lou, because they weren't allowed to spill blood. So do you know what weapon he used instead of a sword? A pen. The pen is mightier. No, he used a mace so he crushed people's bones with a mace which he sort of smashed the head in or smashed their sort of you know chest in with a mace but that doesn't spill any blood so he's fine wow he found a loophole he's known as a warrior bishop uh which are the best best kind of bishops he has himself depicted christ-like in the middle of the tapestry,

if he's paying for it. He's sat there looking like Jesus at the Last Supper, which means, obvious question, Lou, if you had to celebrate yourself with a fantastic tapestry, what would you demand if you'd look like? Or it might have been Odo that commissioned it, or maybe all the nuns fancied him. We can't rule that out.

That's true. Well, I don't know. I mean, hugging a bear, something fun. Oh, nice. Friend to the animals, I don't know. Right. So just you in a sort of woodland scene with squirrels and lovely, adorable bunnies and a bear.

And you're just one with nature and a big old reefer no i don't smoke but something to show my fun side i don't know lou how many men do you think i thought that was gonna go a different way i really thought that was gonna go a different way how many men it's not that podcast i thought it was an intellectual how many men are depicted compared to how many women is my perfectly innocuous question i think it's probably two women on the whole thing oh you are close you're really close one woman three three right okay three what's that mary um can't think of any others to be fair to the guys mary times three to be fair to the guys yeah there are three women there are 35 dogs 37 ships 190 horses

yeah 623 men yeah so yeah it feels about right that feels about right actually is that what comedy's like uh no comedy's better now but yeah there's less horses anyway uh yeah so i'm not sure the bio tapestry is passing the bechdel test so who are the three women then nina because we've mentioned uh edith who is seen in the tapestry isn't she it's presence via absence in a lot of ways because every single stitch on the tapestry is made by women and so you know they are there in it but they're not depicted in it. So Edith is shown at the end of Edward the Confessor's bed crying everything's very sad but she's there, she's one of them. Then there's a really I think really moving and quite strange scene which is

once they've landed in Hastings and they start to decimate the countryside around Hastings, they start building like little strongholds for the Norman knights to stay in. And there's a picture of castle building. And then there's this burning house. Two Normans are like burning, torching a house, which is presumably a house of an English person. And in front, you've got this woman and a child who are running away from the flames and I find that really moving because it's sort of a victims of war scene it's like this is the impact that the invasion had so I find that one again quite powerful to have included it and then there is the mystery scene Al Gifu I mean how many chapters and pages of ink have been spilt over who this woman

is? But it's a good one, isn't it, Greg? It is an intriguing image. That's right. Her name is, I guess, Elfhiva or Elfgifu. I mean, it's an old English name. She's the only woman named in the tapestry. And we don't know who she is. She's an absolute mystery. So we're going to show you this now, Lou. And then I want you to look down at the bottom of the page underneath her to see what you can see. Lou, I'm going to give you a little tip when you're looking at this. Imagine you're looking at the 11th century cover of OK! magazine. Ooh, OK. OK. OK.

Keep that in your head. You know the other guy, Bobo or or hobo whatever his name is odo yeah well we can't rule out that he fancied her can we we cannot rule it out and one of the reasons you brought that up if we can zoom in here here's elfivo or elfgiva and there's a man touching her touching her face and he's a cleric so, touching her face, and he's a cleric, so he's religious. Now look underneath her. He looks like James Acaster. He does look like James Acaster.

That's really funny. James Acaster in a cloak, yeah. And then if you look underneath Elviva, can you see a gentleman in the margins at the bottom, Lou? Oh, yes. Oh, my goodness. What's he up to? What margins at the bottom, Lou? Oh, yes. Oh, my goodness. What's he up to? What is he up to, though?

I'm just going to say what I see. It's exactly what you think it is. He's crouching down and touching his balls. He's completely naked. He's squatting down. He's reaching out almost under her skirt. Yes, yes. He's completely stark bollock naked and he's squatting and it's a weird scene and

historians do not know what this is about we have no idea elf giver is obviously important enough to be named uh someone's touching her face but underneath her is a weird little naked man being creepy so it's quite a strange scene that so we've got we've got a really sad scene nina we've got as you sad scene, Nina. We've got, as you say, the victims of war. And then we have this sort of mystery scandal, almost. Like this woman who, in 1066, was presumably well-known because they named her, but then we don't know who she is. And the nuns depicted that.

It's so weird that the nuns would do that. There's a lot of willies, a lot of willies, actually. Greg didn't give the numbers of willies, but there's a lot. And the nuns are doing these scenes. And there's a lot of scandalous images in the margins that possibly refer to, like, fables about people raping other people and awful things. But they all take place in the margin. You do sort of think these nuns of the 11th century, they're not we might think of as nuns they're sort of noble women they're a bit cheap

also that you know they're worldly a lot of them would have had families before they went into the right convent yeah when I mentioned think about okay magazine it's because imagine you know in eight nine hundred years there's just an image of Jordan that survived somehow in an illumination somewhere. And in 900 years, people are saying, who is this woman? Who is she? What's the context? And the people looking at this, they would have known the context. They would have known who she was.

They would have known who he is. They would have known what the scandal was. But we can't. We can't know because there just isn't the evidence yeah but i do think it's scandalous the fact he's reaching into her private space the fact he's touching her when he shouldn't be and the fact there's this dude below with the big and the thing that we haven't mentioned is he's actually got got five balls and no one's talking about it i think those are very uh very luxurious pubes i think is what's happening there he's he's oh i see he's not groomed himself downstairs and he's just very happy to wear it all uh all natural i think he's uh yeah nuns have gone to town on it

they've colored the they've colored the schlong they've made very detailed piece i mean they've really enjoyed doing that bit haven't they you can tell they've spent a lot of time on that bit yeah no definition in the face it's all in the wang it's true it's true actually he's got a really anonymous face but a very specific penis i mean in terms of uh phallus chat we probably should have warned listeners on the way in sorry listeners nina mentioned it lou but the bio tapestry features 93 penises not enough i'm not enough sorry yes disappointing for you 88 of them are on horses that's to say they're they're horse penises they're not they're not human penises riding a horse that'd be very weird yes yes and then there are four and a half guys whose penises are visible like at least four maybe half a penis sort of visible and some testicles so it's quite honest about natural um body parts yeah i just think as

a general rule of thumb put your bits away and that's just that's just me it's good advice so yeah i mean i mean nina you mentioned actually that we have possible reasons why these nuns may have been doing this. These nuns are barking in Canterbury. And we have Bishop Odo is our most likely patron. And then Queen Edith is a maybe. But the question I wanted to ask Nina is, should we be looking at the Norman conquest through the tapestry,

but actually aware that the tapestry might be some sort of propaganda tool? It could be pro-Norman or even the opposite. There are some sneaky secret clues in there that might be pro-English. What do you think? I think Lou summed it up earlier. You know, it's this balance between stories and facts, but often it's presented as if it's fact. You know, this is absolutely true. It's definitely propaganda. It's massive. You don't make something this massive for three years

without it having a serious investment from someone very important and be an end point for it, where it's going to be hung and displayed and used as a piece of propaganda. So absolutely. But is it pro-Normanan is it pro-english it's it's actually quite complicated and like i mentioned with the victim of war scene it gives you these glimpses that you just wouldn't expect and you don't get from from the text so i think it's quite layered actually yeah in the margins at the top and bottom lou we see lots of animal scenes that might just look like sort of happy little cheerful animal scenes but it's not these are allusions to Aesop's fables have you ever read Aesop's fables did you ever do them as a kid no can't say I did Aesop's fables that many children

enjoy when they're young and then forget and then stumble on later in life uh supposed to have been created by Aesop an ancient Greek I believe and they are stories like the fox and the crow and yes I've read some of that sort of stuff yeah there are these sort of really interesting scenes where high level chatting is going on or very important moments happening and underneath them in the margins we're seeing the Aesop fables and sometimes the fables are about pride vanity don't trust people and so it's using ancient greek stories to then undermine what you're seeing in the main picture interesting that's quite interesting actually not enough art does that sort of sub-tweeting yeah sub-tweeting that's it that's it gosh. Yes. That's quite clever, isn't it?

Yeah. It's quite clever. It's like underneath you, what's going on to our eyes and then underneath you. Wow, I love that. By the looks of it, the nuns of Barking in Canterbury are potentially injecting in some slightly countervailing arguments, some references to Aesop's fables that might be undermining the kind of official narrative. What's also interesting is we've got some visual symbolism in the tapestry, Lou. There are all these lovely hands in there, all done in little different styles. And sometimes the gestures are very specific. So we're going to do a mini quiz for you, just a little one. What do you think these gestures mean? So when someone is touching another person's face, what do you think that represents?

Blessing. Blessing is a good guess. It's more grief, actually. It's a Roman thing. It's an ancient Roman idea. So if someone's reaching out to touch a face, that's their grieving. What if their fingers are outstretched, but the thumb is up like that? Please don't strike me.

It's awe and respect. So if someone's shown doing that, they're in the presence of someone awesome and respectful. And they're like, oh my God, this person's so important, which is nice. I should know that one. Yeah, you must see that all the time, right? Yeah. The whole front row of the audience were all like that. Yeah.

Fingers out, thumbs up. It's Lou Sanders. I love her. Okay, what about a closed fist, thumb out, little finger like that? Phone you later. No, it literally is that, right? It looks like this. Is it?

It looks like the phone call. That's the medieval symbol for eavesdropping. Wow. So when you're listening in on something you shouldn't be listening in on, the way you show that in art, in medieval art, is to do this. Oh, interesting. But it does look like the phone medieval art, is to do this. Oh, interesting. But it does look like the phone call sign, doesn't it? I quite like that.

I've got a lot of people pointing at other people, and that is, do you know what that is? Nice to see you, to see you nice. Yeah, Bruce Forsythe. Weirdly, he's in it all the time. No, that's to indicate who might be talking in the scene. Oh, that's good. That's to help us, the time uh no that's to indicate who might be talking in the scene oh that's good that's to help us the viewer understand who's who's doing the chatting

and then the final one is when uh two characters touch fingers what do you think that is oh i've no idea it's basically a sacred command um might be related to some sort of order to go and do something or maybe a sacred relic so yeah there's all these little clues in the tapestry that are really subtle but they're really lovely um and people might have understood them at the time as being quite obvious it's amazing because they didn't have podcasts at the time so they didn't it's amazing that they they sort of got that isn't it how did they know anything yeah you've talked nina about kind of the art you've talked about some of the materials it's gold thread it's linen how many colors is it 10 colors 10 colors they're all made with natural dyes it's

not the same as other Opus Anglicanum because other Opus Anglicanum would have had gold and silk and jewels woven in it's actually quite simple and that's why I think it was doing something completely different I mean I don't want to overblow this but the barotapestry is the most amazing miraculous survivor there is nothing else like it you know the fragments that you have that survive from around the time they're like tiny like this and they're not very interesting this thing shouldn't have survived so under Napoleon they didn't think it was worth anything and they just used it to wrap up munitions in a barrel. They just threw it over. It was just used like kind of wrapping material, you know, packaging material.

It was basically a tarpaulin on a cart, wasn't it? It was used as basically a covering on a wagon for some cannonballs by Napoleon's soldiers. Yeah, and then it's been all used and abused. It was on a roller. And so, you know, you were saying they could roll it out like a film. It was on a roller at one point, but that meant that the whole outside of the last scene is lost

because that was the bit that was constantly kind of being rolled back and forth and pulled out. So it was really badly damaged through that. And then the really good one, during the war, part of the Nazi party that was charged with stealing artwork, one of the things they wanted was charged with stealing artwork, one of the things they wanted to grab was the Bayeux Tapestry because they sort of thought it was this fabulous product of Western European civilization.

And so they nearly got, the Nazis nearly got their hands on it. But the codebreakers at Bletchley Park intercepted a message that said the Bayeux Tapestry was going to be nicked. It was put in the basement of the Louvre. And by the time the people commissioned to take it back to Germany were sent to France, the first landings on the Normandy beaches happened and France was being liberated.

So they didn't get their hands on it because it could be lost like so many other artworks. So it's remarkable the fact it survived at all. It's remarkable for what it is, 70 metres of embroidery. And it's just, I mean, I just think it's fascinating. I just think it's such an important object. And let's just talk a bit more about the making of it, because the technique used was called pricking and pouncing.

Lou, what do you think pricking and pouncing is? Well, the pricking's obvious, no? With the needle, is it not? And then pouncing, well, there's got to be the other part where you put the thread, I don't know. Back through, loop it back through. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But pouncing maybe is a longer one or something. Pricking, you make hundreds of tiny holes

in the drawing of the parchment and then you blow a powder called the pounce onto it. So it's ground up charcoal and cuttlefish. So it's basically like cuttlefish, and you grind it up, and then you blow it through the holes. You go through the actual holes you've made with the tiny little needle, and then you join the dots with the brush and the ink. So it's this sort of really important sort of manual crafts.

And how did you think I was going to guess that with all the cuttlefish stuff i just thought you'd know lou i mean we both grew up in kent did you not pounce and prick your way through the saturday evenings nina do you want to tell us about the fact that we can identify maybe even individual hands in it when we say hands i mean like individual women doing specific work I mean there had to have been probably 10 12 people working at any one time what's interesting about you talking about the pricking and pouncing Greg is that this idea that you know cartoons are arriving from probably from St Augustine's in Canterbury I think sent out to the nuns the nuns have to take those drawings put them on the linen and then make sense of them interpret them but they cannot get a lot of freedom with that because you you know each

individual stitcher each individual embroiderer is going to bring their own style to the way they do figures i mean the foliage is the bit i get so excited about you know we mentioned it was a bit like a comic book well the only breaks in the scenes are these trees that sort of wrap over and break up the sequence of events but if you start looking at the trees they're beautiful and that's where you can see different hands at work so different women do trees differently they do leaves differently they do you know faces differently i think you know of course it's a collaborative work so they have a lot of room to kind of um yeah express a little bit of their own skill really so you're

saying maybe 10 to 12 women they they're working in 10 different colours. We're looking at potentially something like 45 to 50 kilos of wool, like in terms of weight, like the amount of fabric required. It's huge. What's really interesting is there's a modern replica in Reading. And it was made in the 19th century, Nina, by the Leek Society. There's a lady called Elizabeth Wardle and the Leek Society, and they had a go at copying it.

Do you want to tell us about that? It's a fantastic thing. So they made it in the 1880s. It was sort of designed to be a sort of co-op, if you like, to empower women embroiderers, to give them a sense that they have their own possession of this art form of embroidery. So each of the women was sent a strip of linen and they had to embroider their name under the bit that they did,

which is so different to the original. But it's kind of cool. It's like, look, we're going to have our names etched on this now. It's a very, very close replica. And each of the members of the Leek Society had an example that they're working from but what's really interesting if you go and see the reading example lou you'll be looking for those willies you'll be looking for those little naked guys unfortunately they've got underpants on in

the reading exam wow now now i thought when i first heard about this i was like oh yeah prim victorian women they couldn't simply couldn't bring themselves to draw a penis no no no I first heard about this. I was like, oh, yeah, prim Victorian women. They couldn't simply couldn't bring themselves to draw a penis. No, no, no. The fact is, it wasn't the leak ladies who, you know, edited out the penises. It was the male curators at the Victoria and Albert Museum who sent them the photographs in the first place. They put the little underpants on. So, again, it kind of makes us think maybe Victorian women weren't as prim as we like to think they were. But it's a very, very cool thing.

And it means you can sort of see a really close replica in Britain as well. Yeah, it's beautiful. And the colours are lovely and vibrant as well. So you can pop along to Reading Museum and see it. Indeed, you can see the bio tapestry online. You can scroll through the whole thing on the internet, which is a lovely thing to do. So we've been doing it during this podcast and there is obviously

latin text so i wanted to ask nina oh sorry i thought that was a question for me oh well go on then lu yeah latin and all the question i was going to ask her she and by all means feel this one lu how many people do you think spoke latin at the in 1066? Oh I will defer to Lena in the end. I mean it's not many right? Yeah because it's the language of the church so the people that would have been able to have written it read it they'd have had to be educated within monasteries within convents so yeah we're talking about church people but normal everyday people would have in England they would have spoken old English still in 1066 whereas in Normandy they would have spoken a sort of old French and so what I think is important about the Bay of Tapestries it is a springboard it's a jumping off point you'd have

had it there officially hanging in the cathedral but then you'd bring the you know the bards and they'd be singing the most popular song of the the bards and they'd be singing the most popular song of the version of events and they'd be singing it in the vernacular language so people would understand it so you know this thing isn't static it's dynamic it's supposed to be used and and you know it might have traveled around it might have gone on tour there is actually a sort of one theory nina there's a sort of musical element to this yeah this is so fascinating greg and the reason i'm really excited about it is because I was recently making a documentary in Egypt. And I was looking at Egyptian freezers with this really animated academic.

And he's jumping around. He's telling me all about the procession that it shows. And what he says is, can you see how the spears or the things they're holding break the frame at regular intervals and he said I think it's because it's supposed to be a rhythm it's supposed to be showing the rhythm of dance of movement of the people in the freeze and I was like that's exactly like the Bayeux Tapestry the Bayeux Tapestry has also got we think these sorts of indications that could have been kind of rhythmic beats things for the kind of you know whoever the the bard was that was riffing on it. They could hit the points, hit the points in the scenes. I think, you know, people of the past weren't boring.

They liked a good party. They liked to be entertained as well. Make it animated, make it fun, you know. Yeah. So maybe when you were looking at it as a medieval peasant, maybe it's a bit like watching the kind of the Disney version, the sing-along version of Let It Go in the Frozen movie. The little karaoke snowflake bouncing along the words.

You can sing along. I can see how you spent your evenings, Greg. I've got a toddler. I've got a toddler. I watch a lot of Frozen. It's very good. Frozen 2 actually underrated. So maybe there's a sort of experiential element.

Maybe people are sort of, you know, sniffing herbs. Maybe there's embers going on. Maybe there's monastic chanting happening in the background. I mean, Lou, you're on tour at the moment. Have you ever considered bringing in monastic chanting or herbs into your set? Well, I do burn some… Witches. What's it called?

No. Let them off. No, this Paolo Santo, like it's a stick of wood and it smells really nice and it's good for clearing i used to burn sage and so i do do a bit of that before sometimes light a candle i don't really chart but chant but i have done stuff like that put it this way i've been to a couple of retreats you know you've tried some stuff you've tried some stuff yeah even an artwork might have been experienced in more a kind of not just a visual way but actually sensory like you may be to smell it or even hear people engaging with it would have been really

quite exciting perhaps this is why i get frustrated going to museums and galleries a lot of the time because you'll see a medieval artifact and it's in a glass box and it's white surroundings and there's like nothing there but actually these objects they would have been surrounded by all the senses they reproduced the coronation of Henry II in Gloucester Cathedral a couple of years ago and they put crushed herbs on the floor of the cathedral which is how it would have been and the smell when you went in you're standing on this rosemary and all these things and your feet are like stimulating the herbs and I was like this is. This is how it would have been, you know,

smells, sounds, sights, the light of stained glass kind of bouncing off things, candles, you know, it would have been sensory. You have to see them in that environment. Wow. What do you think, Lou? Have we talked you around? Do you like the Bayeux Tapestry now?

Yeah, I like it. I like it. And for my gigs now, I might start bringing in smells and other sounds and lights and stuff you know lights i do have i am lit but you know you just stand in the dark yeah and some horse dicks and weirdly i was saying before we started recording i have got a story in my show about giving a horse a boner so you know there is crossover uh i don't know if i should ask you about the giving a horse a boner i feel like i wasn't trying to i think it's important to um

you were you were just alluding to the fact you're an expert okay no i just you know i can't help it people get excited to meet me all right well i mean we've talked a lot about um tapestry, which, of course, is an embroidery. And I think that means it's time for us to wrap up the main chat and for us to get into some nuance. The nuance window! Now, this is where Lou and I take a little break. We do some cross-stitch, perhaps, and we allow Nina two minutes to tell us something we need to know about how to think about the Bayeux tapestry so I'm gonna get my stopwatch up Nina and without

much further ado can we please have the nuance window I want to take these two minutes to really kind of go underneath the skin of what we've been talking about throughout this because what I've tried to do through our conversation and what I've tried to do in the way I look at the Bayeux Tapestry and think about it is to look at it in a different way in a way that I was never told how to look at it so I was always told the right way the empirical truths of history you mentioned at the beginning dates and facts and information that I believe that history is far more subjective like that history than that history is the collection of all people, their creativity, their individuality, their difference. And now the way that we do history is changing. So history is written for the people that are consuming it at the time. When we needed a world where people were going across the globe, colonising, the slave trade was operating.

The historians gave readers stories of explorers and great adventurers. When you needed to get warriors to fight the queen and country or king and country, you would tell them stories of warriors, of heroes that had gone to their death. But we are not living in those times. We're living in a new period where we're trying to find a little bit of equality in the world it's still a thin veneer painted over most of the globe but well how do we do history now and this goes right back to the thing lisa at the beginning i really believe it has to be social history it has to be history that reframes the narrative i'm reframing it by putting it around those few women that we can find but just by shifting the frame it's the same history it's the same evidence it's the same facts but it's a different way of looking and I think you can't be what you can't see and historians have a responsibility to put people back into the narrative that have been excluded from it previously and that's two minutes thank you so much great passion i love nina's passion i absolutely agree as ever with everything

she said this has gone very well this show isn't it brilliant well we've had a lovely old chat about the the biotapestry which means it's time now to see how much our lovely comedian has remembered it's time for our quiz so what do you know now this is the so what do you know now yeah everyone always forgets about the quiz they always have a nice time and then they go oh no the quiz we've got 10 questions for you. Here we go. Question one. The Bayeux Tapestry is not a tapestry. What is it? It's a... Embroidery. Embroidery, of course, of course.

Question two. The Bayeux Tapestry is now in Bayeux, but where was it most likely made? Kent, probably in, you know, Canterbury or somewhere like that. It was, yeah. Question three. The tapestry depicts which major historical battle? Oh I do know this one. The Battle of Hastings. It was 1066. Question four. The tapestry is often said to show Harold Gobinson getting an arrow in the eye but how is he more likely to have died? Oh all the bits chopped off. It was all the bits. Question five. Although the tapestry is a mistress work, not a masterpiece,

previously attributed to Queen Matilda, it was almost certainly crafted by which women? The nuns, of course. It was the nuns, the nuns of barking. Question six. One theory says that Queen Edith commissioned the tapestry, but who do most scholars think was the patron? Little Bobo. Odo. His name is Odo. I love that you call him Bobo. I'll give you half a mark

for that. Odo. Bishop Odo of Bayeux. Question seven. The surviving tapestry is roughly 50 centimetres wide and nearly 70 metres long. Roughly how many years do we think it took to make? Three. Three years years it was three uh question eight the tapestry contains references to which famous collection of ancient greek stories oh yes the one um the one about animals and fables and it's called have you got the name there aesop aesop yeah oh no it's very similar to a moisturizer called aesop and Aesop? Yeah. Oh, no. It's very similar to a moisturiser called Aesop. And that's why I should remember it. Okay.

I'll give you half a mark because you remembered fables and you remembered animals. So I'll give you half a mark. Okay. Question nine. There are only three women shown in the Bayeux Tapestry. Can you name one of them? Well, it wasn't Mary. No.

It was that one that no one knows about with a man wanking underneath her. And then it was Edith. Yes. Yes. Question 10. This is for 9 out of 10, which would be very good. In the 19th century, Elizabeth Wardle and the Women of the Leek Society reproduced the tapestry in Reading, but their reference images edited out 93 what?

Schlongs. It was Schlongs. Ding-dongs. 9 out of 10. Very good. Lou Sanders, very strong. You made it quite easy for me and i do appreciate it no no no we had a lovely old chat uh are you pleased with that score yeah i'm glowing fab and listener if you need more dr nina in your life then check out our episode on old norse literature it's's an absolute hoot. And if you want more episodes about art endangered by Napoleon, then you can listen to our Napoleon

episode or our episode about the Chevalier de Saint-Georges. And remember, if you've enjoyed the podcast, please leave us a review, share the show with your friends, make sure to subscribe to You're Dead to Me on BBC Sounds so you never miss an episode. All that's left for me to do is to say a huge thank you to our guests in History Corner. We have the magnificent Dr Yanina Ramirez. Thank you, Nina. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm doing my awe gesture at the camera. Awe and respect. Big fingers, big thumbs. Yeah. And in Comedy Corner, we have the superb Lou Sanders.

Thank you, Lou. Thank you for having me. What a lovely show. And to you, lovely listener, join me next time as we weave another tale of history and hilarity but for now I'm off to go and stitch

some bonus underpants for the men in the You're Dead To Me podcast artwork bye You're Dead To Me was a production by The Athletic

for BBC Radio 4 the research was by John Mason the episode was written and produced by Emma Neguse and me the assistant producer was Emmy Rose Price Goodfellow. The project manager was Saifah Mio. And the audio producer was Abby Patterson.

Hello, I'm Dr Michael Moseley. And in my podcast, Just One Thing, I'm investigating some quick, simple and surprising ways to improve your health and life. From a cup of coffee to increase fat burning. Maybe a nap to boost your productivity. Or how about a bit of dancing to big up your brain power. So to benefit your brain and body in ways you might not expect, here's just one thing you can do right now. Subscribe to the podcast on BBC Sounds.