Get your news delivered straight to you by 7am - sign up to our new Morning Mail newsletter for FREESee more Daily Mail on Google - save us as a Preferred SourceBy CHARLOTTE GRIFFITHS, EDITOR-AT-LARGE, MAIL ON SUNDAY Published: 01:16 BST, 30 August 2026 | Updated: 01:44 BST, 30 August 2026
It has been hailed as the greatest act of entente cordiale in decades.But The Mail on Sunday can reveal that the historic return of the Bayeux Tapestry to these shores descended into diplomatic farce when French bureaucrats cried 'Non!' at the last minute.The 11th-century masterpiece was due to make a dead-of-night journey home in the company of bigwigs from the British Museum, including chairman George Osborne, and a BBC camera crew.Preparations included two dry runs with a copy in a climate-controlled crate equipped with shock absorbers.But the plan was thwarted when police guarding the Channel Tunnel in Calais banned passengers, who also included French politicians and journalists, from the freight train carrying the treasure back to Britain – where it is believed the tapestry was originally sewn. 'The plan changed at the last minute,' said a frustrated source at the British Museum.'You'd have expected the French police to think this through in advance, especially given there had been two full border-crossing rehearsals before July.'If they'd been in a generous mood, they might have agreed to swerve the bureaucracy this time. Scenes 29 to 31 of the Bayeux Tapestry depicting the coronation of Harold Godwinson Chair of the British Museum, George Osborne and France's Culture Minister, Catherine Pégard listen to Michael Lewis, lead curator of the exhibition'This was not your average lorry crossing and there was no chance of migrants creeping on board.'The British Museum's year-long exhibition of the tapestry – which is technically an embroidery – is sold out for the rest of 2026.The Mail on Sunday understands that VIPs, including former Chancellor Mr Osborne, museum director Nick Cullinan and a collection of museum trustees and journalists, were about to travel to France to accompany the tapestry to the UK when it was decreed that they would not be allowed to.It left Bayeux at 6.15pm on July 9, escorted by French security forces to the Eurotunnel terminal at Coquelles, then travelled on a LeShuttle train before UK authorities took over in Folkestone.The tapestry, which reached the British Museum almost nine hours after leaving Normandy, depicts events leading up to William the Conqueror's invasion of England, including the Battle of Hastings and the defeat of Harold, the last Anglo-Saxon king, in 1066.Although synonymous with the French town where it has been kept for centuries, the fragile masterpiece is believed to have been made in England in the 1070s.In return for the loan of the tapestry, some of Britain's greatest treasures will cross the Channel to France, including objects from Sutton Hoo – the Anglo-Saxon ship burial discovered in Suffolk in 1939 – and 12th-century chess pieces from the Isle of Lewis.The planning for the tapestry's return was meticulous, with logistics experts mapping every pothole in the roads between Bayeux and the British Museum.But not, it seems, the pitfalls of French bureaucracy.
