Did Harold really get it in the eye?

Patrick Wormald

• The Battle of Hastings, 1066 by M.K. Lawson
  Tempus, 288 pp, £16.99, October 2003, ISBN 0 7524 1998 6
• The Normans: The History of a Dynasty by David Crouch
  Hambledon, 345 pp, £25.00, July 2002, ISBN 1 85285 387 5
• Domesday Book: A Complete Translation edited by Ann Williams and G.H. Martin
  Penguin, 1436 pp, £18.99, October 2003, ISBN 0 14 143994 7

‘You had your 1917 in 1066,’ a Russian diplomat was once said to have told his British counterpart. The ruling class of England, and much of the rest of Britain, was re-created by the Norman Conquest. Most of the nobly born have at one time or another sought to find progenitors among the Companions of the Conqueror, and the words ‘noble’, ‘gentle’ and ‘aristocrat’ themselves come from French. Within two decades, the Conquest had been commemorated by two astonishing historical artefacts. The Bayeux Tapestry (pre-1082) must be the only artistic masterpiece that is also a crucial source for a major historical event. Domesday Book (1086) provides a cross-section of a society centuries before such information could be extracted from any other source, in England or anywhere else. Then, and since, it has furnished the ruling classes with their title-deeds.