Review – The Story of the Bayeux Tapestry

Posted December 3, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

The Story of the Bayeux Tapestry

by David Musgrove, Michael Lewis

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 352
Rating: four-stars

Synopsis:
Most people know that the Bayeux Tapestry depicts the moment when the last Anglo-Saxon king of England, Harold Godwinson, was defeated at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 by his Norman adversary William the Conqueror. However, there is much more to this historic treasure than merely illustrating the outcome of this famous battle. Full of intrigue and violence, the tapestry depicts everything from eleventh-century political and social life--including the political machinations on both sides of the English Channel in the years leading up to the Norman Conquest--to the clash of swords and stamp of hooves on the battle field.

Drawing on the latest historical and scientific research, authors David Musgrove and Michael Lewis have written the definitive book on the Bayeux Tapestry, taking readers through its narrative, detailing the life of the tapestry in the centuries that followed its creation, explaining how it got its name, and even offering a new possibility that neither Harold nor William were the true intended king of England. The Story of the Bayeux Tapestry explores the complete tale behind this medieval treasure that continues to amaze nearly one thousand years after its creation.

Michael Lewis and David Musgrove’s The Story of the Bayeux Tapestry is pretty fascinating. The Bayeux Tapestry (yes, I know, it’s actually an embroidery) is something that crops up all over the place, with disconnected pieces getting used for evidence or focused on, but somehow I hadn’t really read anything digging into it fully. I was delighted by this deep dive, which considers loads of different questions about the artwork: who made it? Where? For whom? Why?

They do pick favoured theories eventually, but they’re careful to discuss a number of different ideas, with the support for each, making it clear why they’ve plumped for e.g. the work actually being done in Canterbury, with Bishop Odo as the patron, etc, etc. There are more questions hovering around the tapestry — the identity of certain figures, the meaning of particular episodes, the meaning of the borders — than I’d realised, and of course, many of the questions in all likelihood can’t be answered with any certainty.

The one complaint would be that it would’ve been good to illustrate it much more heavily with the pieces of the embroidery being discussed; the colour plates don’t exactly zoom in on the details, and anyway it’d be easier if the images accompanied the text. It’d balloon out the page count, of course, but isn’t it worth it when discussing such a highly visual medium?

Still, I enjoyed this a lot.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

Tags: book reviews, books, David Musgrove, history, Michael Lewis, non-fiction

Review – Beneath Our Feet

Posted August 21, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Beneath Our Feet

by Michael Lewis, Ian Richardson

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 240
Rating: four-stars

Synopsis:
Britain has a rich past, with incredible archaeology. Every day, new discoveries transform our understanding of its history. Most are made not by professional archaeologists, but by ordinary members of the public. Some are chance finds; others are recovered by the thousands of fieldwalkers, mudlarks, and metal detectorists who scour Britain's countryside and waterways looking for artifacts and coins.

Beneath Our Feet is a celebration of this growing public involvement in archaeology, and of the groundbreaking work of the Portable Antiquities Scheme managed by the British Museum in England and Amgueddfa Cymru in Wales. Its mission is collaboration with public finders, encouraging them to report their discoveries so they can be recorded on a national database and shared with archaeologists, historians, and everyone with an interest in the past buried beneath our feet.

From the 3,500-year-old Ringlemere Cup to the Anglo-Saxon Staffordshire Hoard, a heart pendant connected to Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, and a jar of American gold coins buried by a Jewish refugee fleeing the Nazis, these are the stories of more than fifty astonishing treasures, the people who found them, and how they are reshaping British history.

Beneath Our Feet is by Michael Lewis and Ian Richardson, but it covers the finds of many ordinary people — not archaeologists, but metal detectorists, fieldwalkers, mudlarks, and people who just chanced across their finds. In the UK there’s a system to get such things declared and recorded in order that museums can acquire them for display and study, which is great, and here the authors show off some of these items.

It’s a fully illustrated book with colourful, non-glossy pages, some of which are the items themselves and some just images that cast some light on them. I could’ve done with more sense of scale on some of the items, but for a few they do show the scale and the comparisons. Each object or set of objects gets discussed quite briefly, within a couple of pages, and a note about where it can be found now (e.g. a museum or a private collection), so it’s more of a taster than anything.

I really liked it — as a kid who grew up watching and loving Time Team, this kind of “everyday archaeology” (though some of the objects found are in fact officially Treasure and incredibly opulent) is incredibly fun to read about. And it’s a really well-presented book.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

Tags: book reviews, books, history, Ian Richardson, Michael Lewis, non-fiction