Bayeux tapestry too fragile to loan, say French experts as 62,000 sign petition

The Bayeux tapestry is so fragile that transporting it risks irreparable damage, French experts have said, as a petition urging Emmanuel Macron to reverse a "catastrophic" decision to loan the embroidery to Britain passed 60,000 signatures.

- Jon Henley

France's president declared last month that the nearly 1,000-year-old artwork, which depicts William the Conqueror's victory over Harold II of England at Hastings in 1066, would cross the Channel next year.

However, French conservators who have worked on the 70-metre tapestry say it is essentially untransportable, and the organiser of a campaign against the loan argues Macron has ignored near-unanimous expert advice for a grand gesture.

"I'm not against the loan of cultural artefacts and I have always liked the UK," said Didier Rykner, the editorial director of La Tribune de l'Art, an art news website, whose month-old petition against the loan has been signed by nearly 62,000 people.

"But this is a purely political decision. Here is an extraordinary work of art... an artefact without equivalent anywhere - and which expert opinion agrees, overwhelmingly, cannot travel. It's not complicated."

Macron first suggested lending the Bayeux tapestry to the UK in 2018. It was previously requested by London, and rejected by Paris, for the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953 and, in 1966, for the 900th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings.

Nicholas Cullinan, the director of the British Museum, where the Bayeux tapestry is due to go on display for nine months, called it "one of the most important and unique cultural artefacts in the world", symbolic of a millennium of shared history.

Conceived as a momentous cultural offer that might help sustain British ties to the continent even as it was preparing to quit the EU, the plan foundered as cross-Channel relations soured during bitter Brexit negotiations and their aftermath.