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CULTURE

France ready to loan Bayeux Tapestry to Britain – under certain conditions

The Bayeux Tapestry could be displayed in Britain after France agreed in principle to the historic artwork leaving the country for the first time in 950 years. But it won't happen just yet.

Published: 17 January 2018 11:26 CET
France ready to loan Bayeux Tapestry to Britain - under certain conditions
Photo: John McLinden.Flickr
French President Emmanuel Macron is expected to announce the proposed loan of the tapestry, which depicts the Norman Conquest of England, during a visit to Britain on Thursday, according to The Times.
 
The French presidency confirmed on Wednesday that it was in talks to loan the Bayeux Tapestry to Britain, but that the 11th-century embroidery would not be transferred before 2020.
 
An official in Macron's office said “it will not be before 2020 because it's an extremely fragile cultural treasure which will be subject to major restoration work before being transported anywhere.”
 
And a spokesperson for the Ville de Bayeux told The Local that it could be even longer before tapestry makes it to British shores. 
 
“We are in the process of planning a new museum which will house the embroidery. That means it's unlikely the loan will happen before 2023 when it is hoped we will be ready to close for the new development in France,” she said. 
 
The spokesperson suggested that Wednesday's announcement was a little premature, saying that there was a lot to be decided before the loan could go ahead. 
 
“At the moment we need to remain calm over the situation because no one knows if it's possible to send the embroidery to the UK. We must first conduct analyses to see if it's capable of making the trip and there will be a lot of conditions before it goes ahead.
 
“That said, we are very open to working with heritage organisations in the UK and are already very linked with the British Museum,” she added. 
   
Preparations for the relocation are underway following months of discussions between cultural officials in both countries, The Times said.
   
However it could be five years before the tapestry — which is nearly 70 metres (230 feet) long and 50 centimetre high — actually arrives on British shores, the paper added.
 
   
No decision has been made about where it would be displayed during the loan, it said citing British officials.
   
The Bayeux tapestry, which dates from around 1077, depicts the story of William the Conqueror and the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and is displayed in Bayeux, in Normandy.
   
While it has rarely been moved, it was displayed in Paris in 1804, and again briefly at the Louvre in 1945.
 
In the past Britain has unsuccessfully tried to convince the French to lend them the tapestry, once in 1953 for the Queen's coronation and again in 1966 for th 900-year anniversary of the Battle of Hastings.
   
President Macron will hold talks with May at a Britain-France summit at Sandhurst, a British military academy, later this week, with co-operation on various issues set to be discussed.

HISTORY

‘Lost’ manuscript of pro-Nazi French author published 78 years later

A book by one of France's most celebrated and controversial literary figures arrives in bookstores this week, 78 years after the manuscript disappeared

Published: 4 May 2022 11:42 CEST
'Lost' manuscript of pro-Nazi French author published 78 years later

It is a rare thing when the story of a book’s publication is even more mysterious than the plot of the novel itself.

But that might be said of Guerre (War) by one of France’s most celebrated and controversial literary figures, Louis-Ferdinand Celine, which arrives in bookstores on Thursday, some 78 years after its manuscript disappeared.

Celine’s reputation has somehow survived the fact that he was one of France’s most eager collaborators with the Nazis.

Already a superstar thanks to his debut novel Journey to the End of the Night (1932), Celine became one of the most ardent anti-Semitic propagandists even before France’s occupation.

In June 1944, with the Allies advancing on Paris, the writer abandoned a pile of his manuscripts in his Montmartre apartment.

Celine feared rough treatment from authorities in liberated France, having spent the war carousing with the Gestapo, and giving up Jews and foreigners to the Nazi regime and publishing racist pamphlets about Jewish world conspiracies.

For decades, no one knew what happened to his papers, and he accused resistance fighters of burning them. But at some point in the 2000s, they ended up with retired journalist Jean-Pierre Thibaudat, who passed them – completely out of the blue – to Celine’s heirs last summer.

‘A miracle’
Despite the author’s history, reviews of the 150-page novel, published by Gallimard, have been unanimous in their praise.

“The end of a mystery, the discovery of a great text,” writes Le Point; a “miracle,” says Le Monde; “breathtaking,” gushes Journal du Dimanche.

Gallimard has yet to say whether the novel will be translated.

Like much of Celine’s work, Guerre is deeply autobiographical, recounting his experiences during World War I.

It opens with 20-year-old Brigadier Ferdinand finding himself miraculously alive after waking up on a Belgian battlefield, follows his treatment and hasty departure for England – all based on Celine’s real experiences.

His time across the Channel is the subject of another newly discovered novel, Londres (London), to be published this autumn.

If French reviewers seem reluctant to focus on Celine’s rampant World War II anti-Semitism, it is partly because his early writings (Guerre is thought to date from 1934) show little sign of it.

Journey to the End of the Night was a hit among progressives for its anti-war message, as well as a raw, slang-filled style that stuck two fingers up at bourgeois sensibilities.

Celine’s attitude to the Jews only revealed itself in 1937 with the publication of a pamphlet, Trifles for a Massacre, which set him on a new path of racial hatred and conspiracy-mongering.

He never back-tracked. After the war, he launched a campaign of Holocaust-denial and sought to muddy the waters around his own war-time exploits – allowing him to worm his way back into France without repercussions.

‘Divine surprise’
Many in the French literary scene seem keen to separate early and late Celine.

“These manuscripts come at the right time – they are a divine surprise – for Celine to become a writer again: the one who matters, from 1932 to 1936,” literary historian Philippe Roussin told AFP.

Other critics say the early Celine was just hiding his true feelings.

They highlight a quote that may explain the gap between his progressive novels and reactionary feelings: “Knowing what the reader wants, following fashions like a shopgirl, is the job of any writer who is very financially constrained,” Celine wrote to a friend.

Despite his descent into Nazism, he was one of the great chroniclers of the trauma of World War I and the malaise of the inter-war years.

An exhibition about the discovery of the manuscripts opens on Thursday at the Gallimard Gallery and includes the original, hand-written sheets of Guerre.

They end with a line that is typical of Celine: “I caught the war in my head. It is locked in my head.”

In the final years before his death in 1961, Celine endlessly bemoaned the loss of his manuscripts.

The exhibition has a quote from him on the wall: “They burned them, almost three manuscripts, the pest-purging vigilantes!”

This was one occasion – not the only one – where he was proved wrong.

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