Bayeux Tapestry Books

This is not simply a book about the Bayeux Tapestry — it is the closest most people will ever come to holding the tapestry itself. Published by British Museum Press on the very day the British Museum's landmark exhibition opens its doors, this collector's edition reproduces the entire tapestry in extraordinary intimate detail: close enough, as the publishers put it, that you can see every stitch.

What makes this edition exceptional is its format. The main volume — a large-format, deluxe reproduction — is accompanied by a separately bound curators' commentary, designed to be read alongside the images as you move through the tapestry scene by scene. The commentary draws attention to details that even a careful visitor to the exhibition might miss: the actions of marginal figures in the borders, allusions to Aesop's fables, and the tapestry's deliberately expressive use of colour — horses rendered in blue as well as brown, contributing to the kinetic energy that has made this object so compelling for nearly a thousand years.

The production itself is a tribute to the tapestry's handcrafted nature: coloured threads bind the separate volume in a deliberate echo of the embroidery's own texture and materiality. A unique standalone essay contextualises the tapestry for readers coming to it for the first time, making this edition equally valuable to a first-time visitor and to someone who has studied the tapestry for years.