Organiser of petition says French president ignoring expert advice that artefact too fragile to be transported to UK
The Bayeux tapestry is so fragile that transporting it risks irreparable damage, French experts have said, as a petition urging Emmanuel Macron to reverse a “catastrophic” decision to loan the unique embroidery to Britain passed 60,000 signatures.
France’s president declared in July that the nearly 1,000-year-old, 70-metre-long wool-on-linen artwork, which depicts William the Conqueror’s victory over King Harold II of England at Hastings in 1066, would cross the Channel next year.
For nine months from September 2026, it is due to be on display at the British Museum, whose director, Nicholas Cullinan, has called it “one of the most important and unique cultural artefacts in the world”, symbolic of a millennium of shared history between Britain and France.
French conservators who have worked on the embroidery, however, say it is so fragile as to be essentially untransportable, and the organiser of a campaign against the loan argues Macron has ignored near-unanimous expert advice for a grand political gesture.
