Women in Stitches: The Making of the Bayeux Tapestry

Seriously...

BBC

Documentary, Society & Culture

4.1 • 885 Ratings

🗓️ 11 March 2022

⏱️ 30 minutes

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Summary

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 women. This 'freehand' marginalia tell a different story, sometimes undercutting the message of the Norman conquerors in surprising ways. We can imagine the camaraderie and humour of the women sewing it, talking, about their personal tragedies, the terror they survived, the soldiers who were husbands and sons. Read this way, the Tapestry becomes a tantalising portrait of a group of women who are largely unrepresented in history, speaking to us vividly from a thousand years ago. Abigail Youngman uncovers fascinating and intimate details of these women's lives with the help of Dr Alexandra Makin, Dr Daisy Black, Dr Christopher Monk, Professor Gail Owen-Crocker and Dr Michael Lewis. Producer...Mary Ward-Lowery

Transcript

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0:00.0	This was an impregnable fortress. The only way you get out was in a wooden box.
0:05.0	The controversial maximum security prison impossible to escape from.
0:09.0	And one of the duties of a political prisoner is the escape.
0:12.0	The IRA inmates who found a way. of a political prisoner is the escape.
0:12.5	The IRA inmates who found a way.
0:14.5	I'm Carlo Gableer and I'll be navigating a path
0:19.5	through the disturbing inside story of the biggest jailbreak in British and Irish history.
0:25.0	The narrative that they want is that this is a big achievement by them.
0:28.5	Escape from the maze, listen first on BBC Sounds.
0:35.0	BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.
0:39.0	Hello, this is seriously from BBC Radio 4, and I'm Vanessa Casile.
0:46.4	Each week this podcast brings you two of the best documentaries that audio world has to offer.
0:52.2	Next up, something captivating in lights. the embroidery the largest surviving embroidery from early medieval England I think it's a political
1:05.9	statement and it's not necessarily making the statement the normans thought it was as well
1:12.1	we don't really know who made it but evidence
1:15.4	points to it being early medieval embroider as women. Most people think the
1:20.3	embroidered was stitched by Anglo-Saxon women because at the time they were
1:24.1	regarded as the best embroider as in Europe. And if you were doing something like a
1:28.2	really prestigious big project like this that's who you wanted that Yeah. If you're a Norman, commissioning it? I think especially if you're a Norman actually. Okay, yeah. They've commissioned something potentially that shows the English how they came to be conquered and shows Harold as an
1:44.4	unreliable man who breaks his own oaths. And it tells the story of a crucial episode in
1:49.0	English history. Embroidered on a big strip of linen. A really big strip of linen.
1:53.0	70 meters long.
	...

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