The year of the comet

The Battle of Hastings, 1066
by M. K. Lawson

Tempus, £25, pp. 252, ISBN 0752426893

The Bayeux Tapestry, nearly 75 yards long, the mother of all newsreels and the father of all strip cartoons, was embroidered at Canterbury (most probably) some years after the Conquest. With ‘626 human figures, 202 horses, 55 dogs, 505 other animals, 49 trees, 37 buildings and 41 ships’, plus as many corpses, some stripped, some in bits, as any self-respecting modern movie, and two sex scenes, it is one of the world’s great historical documents and its survival is a minor miracle.