A Welsh embroiderer in East London decides to stitch Harry and Meghan’s very public private visit to Nottingham as a modern Bayeux, complete with barriers
Monday, 19 October 2026. Bethnal Green. A long strip of calico pinned across the kitchen table, embroidery threads in a biscuit tin, 7.30pm.
A Project Too Big For The Kitchen Table
I have started something foolish. Inspired by a weekend of reading about the Sussexes, I have decided to embroider a small modern tapestry, in the style of the Bayeux, of Harry and Meghan’s return to Britain. It is going to be two metres long. My kitchen table is one point two metres. The rest of it is currently hanging over the back of a chair and being slowly investigated by my flatmate’s cat, a grey rescue called Owain Glyndwr who believes all fabric belongs to him by right of conquest.
The source material is two reports. The first, on Harry and Meghan’s return to Britain and their Nottingham charity visit, is the gentle one, about a community recording studio, a food poverty charity and the observation that charity can carry on perfectly well without palace permission, taxpayer millions or a man carrying a gold stick. The second, on how Harry and Meghan insist they are private citizens, is the sharper one, about barriers, pooled press, cheering crowds and a commentator noting that her belt was from Marks and Spencer.
The Scenes I Have Planned
The Bayeux Tapestry has about fifty scenes, each with a small Latin caption. Mine will have eight, each with a small English caption in chain stitch. Scene one: Here the Duke and Duchess arrive at Nottingham, eleven minutes late, by Range Rover. Scene two: Here a girl sings about peer pressure and is hugged in the booth. Scene three: Here a ninety-year-old woman produces a framed photograph from 2017. Scene four: Here the Gold Stick is not required.
Scene five: Here the press observe a belt. Scene six: Here a child holds a unicorn balloon. Scene seven: Here a constitutional expert takes an aspirin. Scene eight, which will be at the very end, where the Bayeux Tapestry is missing its last section: Here the couple go home, and nobody knows what happens next. I find this deeply historically accurate. The Bayeux is famous for its missing ending too.
Stitching The Gold Stick
The Gold Stick is giving me trouble. I want to embroider him standing very upright in the margin, with nothing to do, in a gold metallic thread I bought from a haberdashery in Walthamstow that has been run by the same man since 1983. He asked what I needed it for. I said a gold stick. He said, ah, a ceremonial one, and I said yes. He nodded as if he got this request every week. I suspect, in East London, he does.
The report imagines makers of ceremonial gold sticks diversifying into walking canes and curtain rods. I have stitched a small curtain rod into the margin of scene four, as a historical footnote. Medieval embroiderers did this constantly. The margins of the Bayeux Tapestry are full of tiny animals, fables and, in at least one spot, things that would get it banned from a modern school trip. My margins are mostly cats. Owain Glyndwr is in three of them.
The Belt Problem
Scene five is the hardest, because I have to embroider a belt so precisely that viewers will know it is from Marks and Spencer. I have decided to stitch a tiny green and white bag beside it. Historians of the future will look at this and wonder why a twenty-first century textile shows an M and S bag next to a duchess. I hope they write a paper about it. I hope the paper is longer than my tapestry.
A Night Out, Briefly
I took a break on Saturday night to go to a club in Dalston with Cerys, who is from Llanelli and dances like someone trying to warn a ship off the rocks. We talked about the tapestry in the queue for the toilets. A girl behind us from Leeds asked if she could be in it. I said only if she becomes royal or holds a unicorn balloon. She said she would see what she could do. Cerys said that is the most London conversation she has ever heard, and she once heard two men in Hackney argue about sourdough for forty minutes.
What The Tapestry Is Really About
Under the jokes, the two reports agree about one thing, which is that the real work in Nottingham was done by people who will never be on a tapestry: the youth workers, the volunteers, the cooks at the food charity, the girl who sang. So I have decided that the border of my tapestry, all the way round, will be a continuous line of small figures carrying trays, guitars, saucepans and clipboards. No names. No crowns. They will take twice as long to stitch as the royals. That feels about right.
It is now ten. Owain Glyndwr is asleep on scene three. The framed photograph is under his paw. I am taking that as a sign of approval. Tomorrow I start the unicorn balloon, which will be in white satin stitch with a little silver thread for the string. Every great tapestry needs one ridiculous detail. The Bayeux has Halley’s Comet. Mine has a balloon.