1066: The Hidden History in the Bayeux Tapestry

For more than nine hundred years the Bayeux Tapestry?one of the world's greatest historical documents and artistic achievements?has preserved the story of one of history's greatest dramas: the Norman Conquest of England, culminating in the death of King Harold at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Historians have held for centuries that the majestic tapestry?almost 300 feet in length?trumpets the glory of William the Conqueror and the victorious Normans. But is this true? In 1066, Andrew Bridgeford reveals a very different story that reinterprets and recasts the most decisive year in English history. Reading the tapestry as if it were a written text, examining each scene with fresh eyes, Bridgeford discovers a wealth of new information subversively and ingeniously encoded in the threads, which appears to undermine the Norman point of view while presenting a secret tale undetected for centuries?an account of the final years of Anglo-Saxon England quite different from the Norman version of