On Thursday the 3rd September 2026, BBC Radio 4 had Norman Day to mark (or celebrate the return of) the Bayeux Tapestry to England, to the British Museum. The British Museum is free general entry to the zillions of tourists and visitors each year after Tony Blair generosity in 2001 to permanent collections in the ‘UK’, but costs £33 for a standard adult ticket to see the Tapestry.
The gathering at the British Museum on Wednesday 2nd September of King Charles and Queen Camilla, Prime Minister Andy Burnham and his wife Marie-France, and President Macron and his wife Brigitte, BM Director Nicholas Cullinan, and Chair of the Trustees George Osborne was described in press and Radio 4 as an Entente Cordiale. As this blog understood it, such a term was a sort of non legal entity, required a high level gathering, and referred to something constitutional past or present. And that the agreement was Cordiale signifies that beneath the smiles and bonhomie it is quite a complicated thing altogether.
For interest, this blog looked up Entente Cordiale and from Britannica this is cut and pasted (this blog does not believe in plagiarism in any shape or form) https://www.britannica.com/event/Entente-Cordiale
Entente Cordiale, (April 8, 1904), Anglo-French agreement that, by settling a number of controversial matters, ended antagonisms between Great Britain and France and paved the way for their diplomatic cooperation against German pressures in the decade preceding World War I (1914–18). The agreement in no sense created an alliance and did not entangle Great Britain with a French commitment to Russia (1894).
The Entente Cordiale was the culmination of the policy of Théophile Delcassé, France’s foreign minister from 1898, who believed that a Franco-British understanding would give France some security against any German system of alliances in western Europe. Credit for the success of the negotiation belongs chiefly to Paul Cambon, France’s ambassador in London, and to the British foreign secretary Lord Lansdowne; but the pro-French inclination of the British sovereign, Edward VII, was a contributory factor.
The most important feature of the agreement was that it granted freedom of action to Great Britain in Egypt and to France in Morocco (with the proviso that France’s eventual dispositions for Morocco include reasonable allowance for Spain’s interests there). At the same time, Great Britain ceded the Los Islands (off French Guinea) to France, defined the frontier of Nigeria in France’s favour, and agreed to French control of the upper Gambia valley, while France renounced its exclusive right to certain fisheries off Newfoundland. Furthermore, French and British zones of influence in Siam (Thailand) were outlined, with the eastern territories, adjacent to French Indochina, becoming a French zone, and the western, adjacent to Burmese Tenasserim, a British zone; arrangements were also made to allay the rivalry between British and French colonists in the New Hebrides.
By the Entente Cordiale both powers reduced the virtual isolation into which they had withdrawn—France involuntarily, Great Britain complacently—while they had eyed each other over African affairs: Great Britain had had no ally but Japan (1902), useless if war should break out in European waters; France had had none but Russia, soon to be discredited in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05. The agreement was consequently upsetting to Germany, whose policy had long been to rely on Franco-British antagonism. A German attempt to check the French in Morocco in 1905 (the Tangier Incident, or First Moroccan Crisis), and thus upset the Entente, served only to strengthen it. Military discussions between the French and the British general staffs were soon initiated. Franco-British solidarity was confirmed at the Algeciras Conference (1906) and reconfirmed in the Second Moroccan Crisis (1911). (End of cut and paste from Britannica)
That’s quite a complicated twentieth century CE in western Europe and Mediterranean Arab lands and the west of Africa, and Newfoundland, Thailand, Burma, French Indochina, and the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu, but either way a long way from the Hebridean Islands off west Scotland).
In 2026, the high level gathering this side of the Channel was in the British Museum, which did not exist in 1066. Neither did the ‘UK’ and neither did France as such. Philip I was King of the Franks, and his kingdom was really only territory around Paris, with the powerful dukes and counts as lords, rulers, in their own right on the domains from the Channel to the Med. And William was Duke of Normandy. France holds a more unity than the ‘UK’, with Clovis I holding a unity of Frankish tribes (tribes, the ancient grouping of humans and which this blog takes a great interest) way back c.500 CE, but in 1066 there was no France as we know it today either. In 1066 there was no Westminster Parliament.
The tapestry did exist somewhere in the decades after 1066 ‘and All That’, and 1066 and All That is an actual book of 1930 by Julian Yeatman and Walter Sellar, two students at Oxford 1916-1919. And Prime Minister Andy Burnham at the Entente Cordiale of the BM 2026 joked of the new leader from the north coming south for the crown. Meanwhile even larger boats crossed the Channel carrying illegal migrants into England. Who exactly rules or governs Britain? Where do historical lines draw today? Is it time for a sensible discussion about 1066 and All That?