Seriously...

The Bayeux Tapestry is coming to Britain in the near future. It’s among the world’s most famous works of art, but it's also a mystery: no one knows who made it. The stitching, though, is full of clues. Abigail Youngman seeks to reveal the truth about the lives of the women who stitched it, to unpick the secrets they left in plain sight, in the margins of the tapestry. The Bayeux Tapestry records great historical events but its humanity is in the details: the little boy holding his mother's hand tightly as they flee their burning home; scenes of sexual violence; bawdy jokes at the Normans' expense. Scholarly opinion is divided, but some think it was stitched by Anglo-Saxon women who had experienced war and occupation first-hand. The main panels were probably designed by an Important Man (hence the focus on battles, on big sexy horses – surely the BMWs of their day – and political propaganda). But the margins of the tapestry may have been left to the imagination of the stitchers themselves: probably English wom