The Bayeux Tapestry (Annotated‪)‬

What is unique to this edition:
- A commentary written for this book: a note under every page of the tapestry explaining what is happening, who is who, and what historians still argue about
- Expanded edition: four new chapters on who made the tapestry and why; reading its Latin, with the slips and English words the embroiderers left in it; the classical stories behind the embroidery; and the creatures and fables in its borders
- Eleven famous scenes enlarged, each with the Latin stitched above it, an English translation and a longer note
- The whole surviving tapestry in order, reproduced from the Bayeux Museum's photograph of its full length

The Bayeux Tapestry tells the story of the Norman Conquest in wool on linen, nearly seventy metres of it: Harold's journey to Normandy, his oath to William, the death of Edward the Confessor, Halley's Comet, William's fleet and the Battle of Hastings in October 1066.

This edition carries the whole surviving length in order, so you can follow the story the way it was stitched. Beneath every page, a short note tells you what is happening, names the people, and points out details that are easy to miss: the man called Turold holding the horses, the mysterious Ælfgyva, the ghostly fleet in the border beneath Halley's Comet. The new chapters then step back and ask how the tapestry was made, what its Latin really says, and why its designer seems to have known his Virgil.

Every picture is the real embroidery, reproduced from the Bayeux Museum's photograph. Nothing has been redrawn or generated.