Hottest ticket in town … a view of the Bayeux tapestry, on show in London. Photograph: Isogood_patrick/Shutterstock View image in fullscreen Hottest ticket in town … a view of the Bayeux tapestry, on show in London. Photograph: Isogood_patrick/Shutterstock First Edition newsletter Bayeux tapestry Thursday briefing: 68 facts about the Bayeux tapestry as it goes on display In today’s newsletter: No Bayeux ticket? Everything you need to know about the sold-out exhibition – from its epic journey to London to a Game of Thrones likeness
Prefer the Guardian on Google Good morning. If you live in the UK, you have probably heard about the Bayeux tapestry exhibition, which opens today, and you probably haven’t got a ticket. The digital queue was nine-hours long when they first went on sale in July, and the exhibition has already broken the British Museum’s record for the number of tickets sold in a single day.
Some lucky individuals, including King Charles and aspiring overlord Peter Thiel, have been treated to early previews of the medieval tapestry. Guests staying at One Aldwych, a hotel where rooms go for £1,000 a night, can partake in the “Bayeux experience” with a themed cocktail (mead spritzer, anyone?), a full English breakfast and preferential access to tickets.
In a break from our regular programming, this morning’s newsletter brings you 68 facts about the Bayeux tapestry for anyone who hasn’t been able to see the real thing. That’s one fact for each of its 68 metres (bonus fact: it’s 68.3m long). If that’s not your vibe, just be glad I didn’t manage to find 1,066 facts. First, here are the headlines.
Reform | The Met police will investigate allegations that Reform UK broke electoral law relating to overseas donations as part of a wider inquiry.
UK- Israel | Prominent British rabbis have backed Ed Miliband’s sanctions on Israeli settlements, warning that the time for inaction on settler violence must come to an end.
Technology | Just a day after three Anthropic researchers warned that artificial intelligence could kill off humanity within the decade, US politicians have begun lashing out about the risks of the burgeoning technology.
UK news | Protesters who gathered outside a Portsmouth hotel mistook Pakistan’s under-19 cricket team for asylum seekers.
US news | Donald Trump pledged to pay every adult citizen in the US $5,000 if Republicans retain the House and Senate in the midterm elections, during a marathon speech at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas.
View image in fullscreen Children look at a section of the Bayeux tapestry depicting King Harold’s death during a preview at the British Museum in London. Photograph: Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters 1 . First of all, as the exhibition’s curator Michael Lewis points out in his book , the Bayeux tapestry isn’t really a tapestry. It’s “more accurately described as an embroidery”, Lewis writes. (Nobody actually calls it an embroidery, though, so we’ll stick with tapestry).
The embroidery tapestry tells the story of the events that culminated in the Battle of Hastings in 1066, when William the Conquerer defeated King Harold.
It was supposedly commissioned by Bishop Odo, William the Conquerer’s half-brother, for his newly built cathedral in Bayeux in 1077. He was prone to “self-aggrandisement” (in Lewis’s words), which is why he gave himself a starring role in the tapestry.
But it wasn’t made in Bayeux. Researchers think it was probably made in England, near Canterbury…