The Bayeux tapestry: a stupefying, thrilling, horrifying masterpiece that shakes the earth

British Museum, London The greatest battle ever depicted in art is here at last – and it hurtles along, making your heart pound with its sense of doom and destiny, culminating in fires and corpses on a battlefield full of pathos It should not work.

It should not even exist. Nothing about the Bayeux tapestry makes sense according to any norms of art: its creators couldn’t do proper portraits or pictorial depth or landscapes or any of the sophisticated things we associate with timeless masterpieces. When they depict a church,…