A Welsh history graduate in Bethnal Green turns Prince William’s three number plates into a set of embroidered cushions and a lesson in medieval textiles
Saturday, 17 October 2026. Bethnal Green, a flat above a nail bar, embroidery hoop on my knee, Welsh cakes from my mam in a tin, 11.00am.
A Craft Project Arrives Fully Formed
Every Christmas I embroider something for my nan in Swansea. Last year it was a tea towel with the Welsh dragon on it, which she uses as a tablecloth because she says it is too good for drying. The year before it was a cushion that said Cwtch, which she keeps on the good chair where nobody is allowed to sit. This year, until this morning, I had no idea what to make.
Then I read the report on Prince William’s three personalised number plates, NOTYET on an Aston Martin, NOTHARRY on a Range Rover and DISTASTEFUL on a Bentley, and the Christmas project arrived complete. Three cushions. Three words. Three moods. In cross-stitch, on cream linen, with a little royal crown above each one in gold thread.
Nan is going to love them. Nan has held strong opinions about the royal family since 1969, when Prince Charles was invested as Prince of Wales at Caernarfon Castle, an event she watched on a borrowed television and has been arguing about ever since. She will put NOTYET on the good chair. She will put DISTASTEFUL in the kitchen, facing the oven. She will put NOTHARRY in a drawer and pretend she has never seen it, which is how my whole family handles difficult relatives.
Textiles Have Always Carried The News
I studied history at Queen Mary, and my favourite module was on medieval textiles, which my friends assumed was a module about pillowcases. It was not. In the Middle Ages, embroidery was one of the main ways the powerful told their own story. The Bayeux Tapestry is essentially a seventy-metre comic strip about who deserved the English throne, stitched in wool by people who did not get a credit.
The London Prat has had fun with this before, in its piece on Bayeux Tapestry fever, and I would like to submit my cushions as a modest addition to the tradition. Where the Bayeux Tapestry shows Harold and an arrow, my cushions show a prince, a Bentley and a mood. History is not so different. It is still mostly men disagreeing about who gets the throne, while women sit in the corner with needles making sure it is recorded properly.
The Stitching Problem
The difficulty with DISTASTEFUL is that it is eleven letters long, which on a cushion is a commitment. NOTYET is lovely, six letters, very balanced. NOTHARRY fits beautifully. DISTASTEFUL requires either a very long cushion or very small letters, and very small letters in cross-stitch make you go cross-eyed by the fourth T. I have decided to make the DISTASTEFUL cushion longer and narrower, like a draught excluder. Nan can put it at the bottom of the back door, where it will disapprove of the draught.
The report mentions that palace motoring advisers considered further plates such as MYTURN, ASKDAD, NOJAM, STILLMAD and WRONGTIE. I have decided to do these as a set of matching coasters, for the family to use at Christmas dinner. ASKDAD will go in front of my brother Rhys, who has asked our dad for money every year since 2016 and believes nobody has noticed.
The Night Before
I should say that this morning’s embroidery was done slightly slowly, because I was out last night at a club in Dalston with my friend Cerys, who is also Welsh, also in London and also convinced that the music in every London club was better when we were seventeen. We danced until two, ate cheesy chips on the night bus and discussed the monarchy, as Welsh women in London inevitably do after midnight. Cerys says the Prince of Wales title should be retired. I said it should be stitched onto a cushion and put in a drawer. She said that was very Welsh of me. I said that was the point.
Why Craft Is Political
People sometimes think crafts are cosy and apolitical. They have never been either. The women who stitched banners for the suffragettes knew exactly what they were doing. The miners’ wives who made banners in the Welsh valleys during the strikes knew exactly what they were doing. A craft is a way of saying something slowly enough that nobody can interrupt you.
My cushions are not as important as a suffrage banner. But they are, in their small way, a commentary on a prince who needs three luxury cars to express three feelings, made by a woman in a flat above a nail bar who uses one hoop, one needle and a lot of cheap thread from a shop on Roman Road. That is what textile history has always been: the expensive story, told cheaply, by hand.
Progress Report
NOTYET is half finished. The crown on top is wonky. I have decided the wonkiness is deliberate and represents constitutional uncertainty. The Welsh cakes are gone. Mam has texted to ask what I am making Nan for Christmas. I have said it is a surprise. She has said it had better not be royal. I have said nothing. In my family, that counts as a confession.