Britain appears to be a nation on the verge of Norman-conquest mania. In July, the prime minister and the French president announced that the Bayeux tapestry – the epic 11th-century embroidery that depicts the 1066 conquest of England – would be loaned to the British Museum in 2026-27.
This makes new BBC drama series, King & Conqueror, which depicts the events leading up to the Norman conquest, extremely well timed. The credits of each episode feature the drama’s title overlaid on imagery from the Bayeux tapestry. But how does the drama compare to that most evocative textile account of the conquest?
I could write at length about how the BBC drama variously depicts and diverges from the tapestry’s version of events. And the extent to which King & Conqueror is consistent with 11th-century written and embroidered sources has been explored by historians elsewhere.
