Stranger than Fiction

The book I read for the 2021 NONFICTION READER CHALLENGE in the category Wartime Experiences is The Norman Conquest , by Marc Morris, 2012. I learned about the Norman Conquest when I was in school and know the date 1066. But schoolchildren in Britain probably learn more about it than I did in the United States. At least that’s the impression I got from the introduction.   In referring to the Bayeux Tapestry, Morris writes, “perhaps the most famous and familiar of all medieval sources, at least in England, where we are introduced to it as schoolchildren, and where we encounter it everywhere as adults: in books and on bookmarks, postcards and calendars, cushions and tea towels, key rings, mouse-mats and mugs.” I have heard of this tapestry (which is really an embroidery), but never learned about it in school. It is familiar-looking to me, but I have never studied it closely. That has now changed. After reading this book, I have a new interest in this incredible piece of work and...