For Competition 3471 you were invited to submit a poem about the Bayeux Tapestry’s visit to the British Museum. There were a lot of entries, many very good, and mentions should go to Jenny Pearson, Nick Syrett, Shirley Curran, Adrian Fry, Janine Beacham, Nicholas Lee and Basil Ransome-Davies, among others. The prizes go to those below.

The Duke spiked the last Saxon with his spear

Then said: ‘That’s it! Now I’ve got an idea.

This was a battle folk will long recall,

What with old Harold copping it and all.

Mind you, the national press will be no use –

That Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’s Fake News.

We’ve got to keep 1066 in mind –

I’m thinking tea-towels and stuff of that kind.

I’ll get that bishop chappie from Bayeux

To have his nuns embroider us a few.’

Alas, the bishop must have heard him wrong.

Who needs a tea-towel two hundred feet long?

So off to Normandy it had to go

Until sent back on temporary show,

And you can buy tea-towels in the gift shop,

With just the highlights, at ten quid a pop.

Brian Murdoch

Another crossing hails from Normandy –

Unlike the day when William sallied forth

to seize the throne – no spoiling for a fight,

no burning towns, no Harrowing of the North.

A fragile length of cloth has reached our shores,

protected, mounted on a paravent:

a history of invasion, stitched by nuns

and women seeking sanctuary in Kent.

Laid flat, it tells of battle, violent deaths

and wounds inflicted by opposing forces,

while ninety-three embroidered phalluses

adorn the scene, not all attached to horses

Now thousands shuffle past to see how Harold

got it in the eye – but is that true?

The truth is fragile as the cloth it holds,

the action biased to the victor’s view.

Sylvia Fairley

It’s very hard, amidst all the kerfuffle,

The hours-long queues and forty-minute shuffle,

The epic sweep of victory and defeat,

To pause, and look beneath the warriors’ feet.

But: under the chronicle of Anglo-Saxon failure,

Eternal truths lurk in the marginalia.

The seamstresses knew (perhaps they saw)

The price of conquest: human spoils of war.

For victors always take much more than land

That they have won by force of steel and hand;

Women as trophies for the winning men?

The lap of dishonour has not changed since then.

So glance below what they were made to sew

And see what they were brave enough to show,

These needlewomen plucked from holy orders:

The whole truth, embroidered in the borders.

Richard Warren

It cost a bomb to get the thing conveyed

To London where it’s currently displayed

Allowing crowds a forty-minute visit

To gawp at something said to be exquisite.

Commissioned by the Bayeux Bishop Odo

It’s as fictional as Tolkien’s hobbit Frodo

And falsely pictures Harold doomed to die

Pierced with a Norman arrow in his eye.

The tale it tells is biased in its views –

A Middle Ages model of fake news

With William depicted as a saint

Which, as a ruthless plunderer, he ain’t!

Though some might call the tapestry bewitching,

For me it’s just a waste of wool and stitching.

I’d rather sit in comfort sipping wine

And, should I choose to, scan the frieze online.

Alan Millard

‘Embroidery, not Tapestry’

Bleat the pedants obsequiously;

But Bay-Uh or Bay-Oo?

Merde alors, que je m’en fous,

It’s just a wall hanging to me.

At seventy metres, extensive;

Insurance? Due north of expensive

The artwork’s bewitching –

Those colours, the stitching,

Both bywords for labour-intensive…

Joe Punter lays thirty-odd down,

Spending hours in the queue to go round

But it’s brilliant, it’s great

Check it out, venerate

This, the all-time best stitch-up in town!

Mike Morrison

Dear Sir, If I may share my point of view,

I’d like to burn that cloth from Bayeux,

The Tapestry might seem a beauty,

But still, I fear, it’s just war booty,

Slave labour made it, forced to lie,

As Normans brayed, good Saxons died.

So should we laud it? Don’t make me laugh,

I’d rather it was ripped in half,

In fact I’d like some compensation,

Payback for my colonised nation –

Just because it’s long ago,

Makes no difference, as we now know,

The French are never to be trusted,

From Tunbridge Wells, I am Disgusted.

David Harris

So you claim it was made in Bayeux, huh?

Disrespectful, but maybe not meant.

Still, we know it was ladies in Kent.

And it isn’t a tapisserie, mon ami.

Who’d call it that? Only a fool…

It’s of canvas, embroidered with wool.

Embroidery, then, and Anglais. C’est vrai!

It’s ours, of that there’s no doubt.

So naive of you to let it out!

You won’t be getting it back, Jacques.

It’s finished its wandering days.

In the British Museum here it stays.

It was yours for a while; now it’s gone, non?

You must get that fact into your head.

Now it’s home, and no more need be said.

(We’ve some marbles you could have instead.)

Bob Newman

No. 3474: Bearing up

In the week of Winnie the Pooh’s centenary, you are invited to submit a passage in which the inhabitants of the Hundred Acre Wood navigate modern life (150 words maximum). Please email entries to competition@spectator.co.uk by 28 October.