"This is the biggest history news story of my career"

The Bayeux Tapestry is set to go on display in the UK next year, almost a millennium after its creation. Following the announcement of the news, 10 historians reveal their hopes and fears about the loan

- MATT ELTON

"The Norman Conquest was portrayed at the time as the judgment of God on the unrighteous English"

MARK HAGGER

Reader in medieval history, Bangor University

The Bayeux Tapestry is one of a handful of historic artefacts that is immediately recognisable to almost everyone. It was due to be dismounted and packed into a conservation crate in September. That will still happen but, though the original intention was simply to put it in storage until its new home in the Bayeux Tapestry Museum was ready, it will now be put on display in London instead - something that is perhaps more likely to ensure its wellbeing during the time it is away from its home, and which has rightly been greeted with enthusiasm across the media.

It is a timely reminder of the ties that bind Britain to France, and an opportunity to stress the positives of that relationship. The Norman Conquest was portrayed at the time as the judgment of God on the unrighteous English, and the English elite was certainly stripped of both power and possessions. But English landholders survived a fact observable now and then in legal disputes and in the financial records of the Norman and then Angevin governments.

Norman and English families became linked by marriage. Lines became blurred. As early as the 1130s, Norman families in England were developing an interest in English history as they began to identify with their new home. And though, once upon a time, we were all told that Old English died out as a language of learning and culture after 1066, more recent work (by Elaine Treharne, in particular) has demonstrated that this was simply not the case.