Britain's Bayeux Tapestry

 

The Bayeux Tapestry is visiting the UK for the first time in over 900 years! It arrived earlier this month and will be going on display at the British Museum in September.

While I’ve never seen the 11^th-century tapestry at its home in Bayeux (and I’m not sure if I’ll manage to see it while it’s over here), I have seen the full-size Victorian replica which is held at Reading Museum. The replica tapestry is 70 metres long and was made by a group of women in the late 19^th century. 

Fun Fact: The Bayeux Tapestry is not technically a tapestry in the strict sense! It’s an embroidery, since the designs are stitched onto the base fabric, not woven as part of it. 

 

As someone who works with manga, it was fascinating to see this much older example of sequential art. It made me want to learn more about the history of narrative art in the medieval period. The tapestry tells the story of the events leading up to the Norman conquest of England in 1066 through a series of scenes accompanied by captions in Medieval Latin. The narrative flows in order from left to right and the format is very reminiscent of a long comic strip or a storyboard.

Wonderfully nondescript animal. I love it. 10/10.

 

I was endlessly charmed by the various birds and beasts filling the top and bottom borders of the tapestry. Perhaps it’s uncultured of me, but I think they may be my favourite feature of the entire piece. Like many animals in medieval art, it can be a bit unclear what some of them are meant to be, but I think that just adds to their character.

Focusing so much on the figures in the borders as I followed the tapestry around the room came with an interesting side effect. I noticed that in the final stretch of the narrative, soon after the Battle of Hastings begins, the whimsical creatures in the lower border are suddenly replaced with fallen soldiers and horses. It’s a chilling moment and it really serves to highlight the brutality of the battle.

 

There are so many things to see at Reading Museum, not just the replica tapestry. They have a lot more galleries than I remembered from my last visit 20+ years ago and we only managed to look around a few of them on this recent trip. Hopefully the next visit won’t take quite so long to arrange!

Manga Shakespeare

Mini post inspired by a day trip to Oxford last year!

No day out in Oxford would be complete without a visit to Blackwell’s bookshop. Down in the vast Norrington Room, I was delighted to find a set of Manga Shakespeare books sitting side by side with the serious study guides in the Shakespeare section.

These manga adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays came out when I was a teenager just getting into manga and anime for the first time, and I was a huge fan. My friends and I even cosplayed as the manga versions of Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern one year at MCM Expo – now MCM Comic Con – in London. (I was Rosencrantz, incidentally.)

I still have a full set of Manga Shakespeare on my shelves, including a few signed by the artists. 

I was the type of nerdy teenager who already enjoyed Shakespeare, but I think manga is a great tool for making the Bard’s work more accessible and interesting to those who might not otherwise want to engage with it. Several of the manga adaptations take the plays to new settings and contexts (e.g. Romeo and Juliet in 21^st-century Tokyo, cyberpunk Hamlet), but the text is all taken directly from the originals. 

In addition to the Manga Shakespeare line, it turns out SelfMadeHero has published a whole range of graphic novel adaptations of classic literature. I might have to add a few of them to my collection.

As a bonus, across the street from the iconic big Blackwell’s is the specialised branch Blackwell’s Sci-Fi, Manga & Games (where the Art & Poster Shop used to be). Downstairs in the manga section, I spotted several series that I translated for Yen Press! It’s still exciting to see my translations ‘out in the wild’.

Christmas at Basildon Park

Basildon Park, an 18^th-century Palladian-style house in Berkshire, is always on our list of National Trust properties to visit around Christmas. The volunteers and staff do a beautiful job every year of decorating the house and gardens to a new festive theme.

The 2025 theme was ‘The Enchantment of Ballet’, which meant tutus, twinkling lights and pointe shoes aplenty. The decorations were as gorgeous as ever, but they also made me realise how few ballets I actually know! Each room was themed around a different classic ballet, and I definitely needed hints for a few of them.

 

I enjoyed spotting all the little clues and details. A felt Mouse King among the nutcracker soldiers on the giant tree by the staircase. A small donkey ornament on one of the many trees in the A Midsummer Night’s Dream room. Cogs and keys for the mechanical dolls of Coppélia. An ‘M’ and a ‘C’ hanging on the two colour-coded trees in the Library, denoting the Montagues and Capulets of Romeo and Juliet. The list goes on!

Something else that stood out to me about the way the house was decorated was the clever use of the space. In the Dining Room, the long table was covered with foliage, turning it into the overgrown forest surrounding the slumbering palace of Sleeping Beauty. The Kitchen and downstairs tea-room were a natural setting for Cinderella, reflecting the character Cinderella’s position in her household. The striking red felt walls of the Octagon Room made a perfect backdrop to set off the bright white and silver decorations representing Swan Lake, which might have disappeared in a lighter room. Things like this show the real thought and care put into the decorations by the staff and volunteers.

 

I got into collecting the National Trust visitor stamps in early 2024 and am now on my second official Visitor’s Passport (pink this time). Every year, I secretly hope that one of the places we visit will offer a special Christmas stamp, but no luck so far. Still, Basildon Park’s normal stamp is very nice too!