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By Root 564 0

it had escaped the threatened destruction of Paris and the clutches of Himmler's SS. Likewise the first 'monuments' officer of the Allied force to arrive on Norman soil, a New York architect named Bancel LaFarge, notwithstanding that he was based in Bayeux, was at first unaware of the tapestry's precise location. It was only at the end of August 1944 that LaFarge was able to inform the mayor that the tapestry was not at Sourches at all, but in liberated Paris. Overjoyed to learn that the precious treasure was still intact, Monsieur Dodeman at once requested the authorities in Paris to return the tapestry to Bayeux, where, no doubt, British troops and Norman civilians alike would appreciate viewing a relic so redolent of their shared past. The roads of northern France were still vulnerable to air attack, and the Parisian public had not had the opportunity of seeing the tapestry in their own city since the days of Napoleon. The mayor was therefore persuaded to allow it to be placed on public exhibition for a few months at the end of 1944 at the Louvre, a repeat in rather different circumstances of the exhibition of 1803.

Finally, in March 1945, on the eve of peace in Europe, and following a successful showing in Paris, the Bayeux Tapestry was returned to Bayeux after an absence of almost four years - the longest known period that it has ever been absent from the town. The Tapestry was at last able to resume a more tranquil existence. The post-war years saw an enormous increase in tourism, and with the number of visitors increasing each year, it became evident in the 1970s that the building it then occupied in Bayeux was no longer adequate. A Bayeux seminary, built in 1653, was chosen as the tapestry's new museum. In 1983 the conversion of the building - renamed as the Centre Guillaume le Conquérant - was completed and Bayeux's great embroidery is now fittingly displayed there. Visitors of every nationality arrive each year in their thousands at the gates of this fine museum. Few know of the tapestry'sown eventful past. They come to admire this precious and unique survivor of the distant age of the eleventh century and to recall the deadly rivalry of Earl Harold of Wessex and Duke William of Normandy - a rivalry that shook their world, and still, in some ways, affects ours.

5

The Strange Journey of Harold Godwinson

The year is 1064 or early 1065 [scene 1]. The elderly king of England, seated on his finely made chair, is in a secret conference with two men. One of them is his brother-in-law, Earl Harold of Wessex; the other is unknown. The pale, full-bearded old king, known to history as Edward 'the Confessor', is a large, stooping figure in a long green robe. Now in his sixties, he has reigned over England for more than twenty years. The country is prosperous; its government, for the times, is sophisticated and efficient. The ability of the Anglo-Saxon monarchy to collect a nationwide tax is elsewhere unparalleled, and no doubt envied, in the other halls of European power. All, however, is not well. In twenty years of marriage Edward has failed to produce a single heir and this failure has inevitably caused an aura of uncertainty to hang over the delicate matter of the succession.

The low and muffled talk at that meeting would have proceeded against a very different background had Edward ever fathered a son; but his marriage with Edith, Earl Harold'ssister, had been completely barren.1 It was one of those political unions which kings are often constrained to make. In this case the political imperative in the 1040s had dictated an alliance with the powerful Godwin family, without whose support he would have found it difficult to rule England. We cannot know the true cause of Edward's childlessness - the secrets of the royal bed remain discreetly curtained off to history - but it is certainly not difficult to identify strains which may have affected the conjugal life of the royal couple. Long before they were married, before Edward was even king, a terrible crime had taken place which had touched Edward deeply. In 1036