Close up of the Bayeux tapestry. Shutterstock/sogood_patrick . Cover picture of Franck Sorbier Haute Couture Paris AW25/26 by Andrea Heinsohn for DAM.
By Alexandra Makin
The Bayeux tapestry is set to return to the UK for the first time in almost 1,000 years. One of the most important cultural artefacts in the world, it is to be displayed at the British Museum from September 2026.
Its significance for history is unquestioned – but you may not think of the Bayeux tapestry as a work of art. Sure, you may recognise it from your history lessons or political campaigns. Maybe you like embroidery and textiles or know about it because of the modern versions it inspired – think the Game of Thrones tapestry or the Great Tapestry of Scotland. Perhaps you are an early medievalist and use it as comparative evidence.
For me, this now famous wall hanging is undoubtedly art, created with great skill. What fascinates me as a textile archaeologist is how early medieval people saw and understood the tapestry.
First, let’s contextualise it a little. The hanging is not a woven tapestry but an embroidery, stitched in wool threads on nine panels of linen fabric that were then sewn together. It was made in around 1070, probably in England. Nobody knows how big it originally was, but it now measures 68.3 metres long by approximately 70cm high.
Starting at the end of Edward the Confessor’s reign (1042-1066), the tapestry’s comic book narrative tells a vivid, very modern story of the struggle for power and the English throne – and the brutal means William of Normandy (1028-1087) used to get it.
It follows the highs and lows of Harold Godwinson, Edward the Confessor’s brother-in-law, who became king after Edward’s death in 1066, and his eventual downfall at the Battle of Hastings.
The end of the hanging, and therefore the story, is now missing but it was probably the triumphal coronation of William. It would have provided a mirror in symmetry to the first scene, which depicts an enthroned Edward.
Sensory archaeology of the tapestry
Today, the hanging is famous because it is the only surviving example of its kind. But documentary sources from early medieval England demonstrate that this type of wall hanging was a popular way for families to depict their stories and great deeds.
A good example is the Byrhtnoth wall hanging, which Æthelflæd, the wife of an Anglo-Saxon Ealdorman of Essex Byrhtnoth, gave to the church in Ely after he was killed in 991. We know that the Normans also understood these storytelling wall hangings because Abbot Baudri of Bourgueil (c. 1050-1130) expertly incorporated such a device in a poem he wrote to honour Adela of Blois (c. 1067-1137), the daughter of William the Conqueror and Matilda (c. 1031-1083).
The Bayeux tapestry was, therefore, an obvious way to tell people about the downfall of the English and the rise of the Normans. But this is not all. The early medieval population of Britain loved riddles, multilayered meanings and hidden messages. Evidence survives in pieces like the gold buckle from the 7th-century Sutton Hoo ship burial, the early 8th-century Franks Casket and the 10th-century Book of Exeter. So it is not surprising that people today have argued for hidden messages in the Bayeux tapestry.
While these concepts are interesting, so much emphasis has been placed on them and the role the embroiderers played in creating them, that other ways of early medieval viewing and understanding have been ignored.
Early medieval society viewed its world through the senses. By using sensory archaeology, a theoretical approach that helps researchers understand how past societies interacted with their worlds through sight, touch, taste, smell and sound, we can imagine how people encountering the Bayeux tapestry would have connected with and understood it.
A guide to the story depicted on the Bayeux tapestry.
Art historian Linda Neagley has argued that pre-Renaissance people interacted with art visually, kinaesthetically (sensory perception through bodily movement) and physically. The Bayeux tapestry would have been hung at eye level to enable this. So if we take expert in Anglo-Saxon culture Gale Owen-Crocker’s idea that the tapestry was originally hung in a square with certain scenes facing each other, people would have stood in the centre. That would make it an 11th-century immersive space with scenes corresponding and echoing each other, drawing the viewer’s attention, playing on their senses and understanding of the story they thought they knew.
If we imagine ourselves entering that space, we move from a cooler, stone-hewn room into a warmer, softer area, encased in linen and wool, their smell tickling our noses. Outside sounds would be deadened, the movement of people softened, voices quietened. People would move from one scene to another, through the open doors of the stage-like buildings where the action inside can be seen and watched, boldly or surreptitiously. The view might be partially blocked by others and their reactions and gesticulations as they engaged with and discussed what they saw.
The bright colours of the embroidery would have made a kaleidoscope of colour, a blur that defined itself the closer people got to the work. The boldness and three-dimensionality of the stitching helped to draw them into the action while any movement of the hanging brought the imagery alive.
Here are the main characters in the room with you, telling you their story, inviting you to join them on their journeys of victory or doom.
As onlookers discussed what they saw, or read the inscriptions, they interacted with the embroidered players, giving them voice and enabling them to join the conversation. If the hanging formed part of a banquet then the smell of food, clanking of dishes and movement of the fabric and stitchwork as servants passed would have enhanced the experience. The feasting scenes dotted throughout the hanging would be echoed in the hall.
I believe the Bayeux tapestry was not simply an inanimate art object to be viewed and read from the outside. It was an immersive retelling of the end of an era and the start of something new. When you entered its space you became part of that story, sensorially reliving it, keeping it alive. To me, this is the true power of this now famous embroidery.
Beyond the canon
As part of the Rethinking the Classics series, we’re asking our experts to recommend a book or artwork that tackles similar themes to the canonical work in question, but isn’t (yet) considered a classic itself. Here is Alexandra Makin’s suggestion:
The ITV series Unforgotten, now in its sixth season (with a seventh on the way) gripped me from the start. It follows a team of British police detectives as they track down the killers of people whose bodies have been recently found, but who were murdered years before.
As they do, we, the viewer, are given access to the characters’ often emotional stories. We are brought into their sphere and experience their pain, distress, happiness, horror. We get unrivalled access, eventually, to the motives for their seemingly strange actions. As with the Bayeux tapestry, we are swallowed up in their worlds. This is achieved by Chris Lang’s fabulous writing, the cinematography and the exquisite acting.
Together these elements make a whole, opening a window, immersing you in a world full of powerful sensory engagements. For me, this is classic art in the making.
Alexandra Makin, Third Century Research Fellow, Manchester Metropolitan University
Mr Darcy played by Colin Firth in the BBC's beloved 1995 adaptation of Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice.
By Louise Curran
In Ang Lee’s adaptation of Sense and Sensibility (1995), the handsome cad Willoughby (played by Greg Wise) rescues Marianne (Kate Winslet) on horseback in the middle of a raging storm. Pathetic fallacy has rarely looked so good.
Marianne locks eyes with him and falls passionately in love. In Austen’s version, though, it is Marianne’s mother and sister who first register his attractions. “The eyes of both were fixed on him with an evident wonder and a secret admiration … his person, which was uncommonly handsome, received additional charms from his voice and expression.”
Willoughby has “exterior attractions” that the two women quickly notice. Once Marianne can master her own confusion, she rapidly constructs him in her mind as the ideal romantic protagonist.
“His person and air were equal to what her fancy had ever drawn for the hero of a favourite story … Her imagination was busy, her reflections were pleasant, and the pain of a sprained ankle was disregarded.”
Yet despite such auspicious beginnings, by the end of the novel Willoughby has proved to be feckless, shallow and passively cruel. The actual leading man turns out to be the respectable, yet taciturn, Colonel Brandon (played in the film by Alan Rickman).
In his introduction to the 1895 edition of Sense and Sensibility, the poet and essayist Henry Austin Dobson remarked upon the shrewd realism at work in Austen’s ending: “Every one does not get a Bingley, or a Darcy (with a park); but a good many sensible girls like Elinor pair off contentedly with poor creatures like Edward Ferrars, while not a few enthusiasts like Marianne decline at last upon middle-aged colonels with flannel waistcoats.”
For many modern readers, Brandon remains a disappointing compromise when compared with Willoughby’s flagrant virility.
Austen’s heartthrobs
All of Austen’s leading men are rich, which certainly helps to intensify their charms. Fitzwilliam Darcy of Pride and Prejudice is the wealthiest man of Austen’s fiction.
Initially he draws local attention for his “fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mien, and the report, which was in general circulation within five minutes after his entrance, of his having ten thousand a year”, until he is quickly “discovered to be proud”.
One of the key debates of Pride and Prejudice (1813) concerns marriage for love versus convenience and financial security. Elizabeth Bennet’s intelligent aunt Mrs Gardiner argues that the phrase “violently in love” is “so hackneyed, so doubtful, so indefinite” and “often applied to feelings which arise only from a half hour’s acquaintance”.
She eloquently expresses the problematic nature of infatuation and the fictional construction of the heroic ideal so prevalent in Regency culture.
Colin Firth’s infamous Pride and Prejudice wet shirt scene.
The phrase recurs right at the end of the novel, at the moment Elizabeth discloses her feelings for Darcy, producing a happiness in him that he “had probably never felt before; and he expressed himself on the occasion as sensibly and as warmly as a man violently in love can be supposed to do”.
The repeated phrase is a lovely touch, hesitating as it does between endorsing Darcy as a swoon-worthy leading man, burning with passion, and holding back from such excesses through the suggestion of a faint ridiculousness.
The 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice gave visual language to this conjunction of intrepid yet hesitant masculinity. Darcy (played memorably by Colin Firth) emerged from water like an Adonis in a wet shirt, only to face an embarrassed encounter with Elizabeth (Jennifer Ehle). Though usually handsome and always relatively rich, Austen’s leading men are also unconventional in that they can be awkward, mistaken, tongue-tied – even a bit dull.
When Darcy’s housekeeper at Pemberley describes him as “handsome”, this adjective, as Austen expert Janet Todd has noted, “extends over physical, social and moral qualities”. This conjunction of qualities shapes the leading men of Austen’s fiction not so much as suitors as familiar figures who come to be transformed by love.
Uncomfortable matches
Some aspects of this heroism might strike modern readers as odd, and they alert us to changing perceptions of the romantic hero since Austen’s time.
The age difference in Emma between Emma Woodhouse (21) and George Knightley (37) was not uncommon in the Regency era, when marriage was often predicated on women’s reproductive value and men’s financial security.
It can be uncomfortable for some readers when Knightley emphasises the fact that he was 16 years old when Emma was born (as he is cradling his baby niece). And when he jokes about having been in love with her since she was “13 at least”. Rather than suggesting anything dubious, this was intended to draw attention to the incremental steps the couple make from brother and sister-in-law to friends and then lovers.
Johnny Flynn’s Knightley has more youthful energy.
Recent adaptations of Emma seem uncomfortable with this age gap. Despite the fact that both Jeremy Northam and Johnny Flynn were in their mid-30s, and of similar age to Knightley in their respective versions (1996 and 2020), Flynn gives off a younger, more virile energy. He punches the air in joy when he realises Emma will marry him, in contrast to Northam’s emotional restraint.
Maria Edgeworth, a contemporary novelist and important influence on Austen, was struck by the way Austen’s leading men were supportive in private as much as in public.
In a letter, Edgeworth referenced the moment in Persuasion (1817) where Captain Wentworth shows his feelings for Anne by submitting to domestic chores: “The love and lover [are] admirably well drawn: don’t you see Captain Wentworth, or rather don’t you in her place feel him taking the boisterous child off her back as she kneels by the sick boy on the sofa?”
In figures such as Emma’s Mr Knightley, who represents the landed English class, and Persuasion’s Frederick Wentworth, a naval hero of the Napoleonic wars, Austen put emphasis on a new kind of domestic masculinity as a source of female desire and national pride.
Like Austen’s heroines, her leading men are not superlatively good. Their enduring appeal lies more in their capacity for self development and their acceptance of change and adaptation. Austen depicts love as the awakening of mutual esteem. It’s something to be worked on rather than something that magically arrives.
Louise Curran, Lecturer in Eighteenth-Century and Romantic Literature, University of Birmingham
Ruins of the ancient Minoan settlement in Gournia, Crete. Photograph: Georgios Tschilis/Shutterstock. Cover picture of Franck Sorbier Haute Couture AW25/26 by Andrea Heinsohn for DAM.
By Ellen Adams, King's College London
The Minoan culture was the first highly complex society on modern European soil, with palaces, writing, stunning art – and even flushing toilets. The Minoans lived in the bronze age (circa 3000-1200BC) on the Mediterranean island of Crete, which served as a stepping stone between Europe, Africa and Asia.
My new book, The Minoans, presents key features of their archaeology, including architecture, art, religion, writing, bureaucracy and the economy. It explores how this pioneering European civilisation has influenced western culture – and how Minoan culture has been reconstructed, re-imagined and represented in museum displays.
Traditionally, the ancient Greeks have been viewed as the fountainhead of European civilisation, but Minoan culture was flourishing many hundreds of years earlier. Despite this expanse of time, there was a loose dialogue between them: the Minoans influenced the Mycenaeans, who themselves were early Greeks, and the later classical Greeks indicate some “memory” of the Minoans, as filtered down through their myths.
For example, in the later Greek stories (from the first millennium BC), Crete is closely associated with bulls. Zeus took the form of a bull when he seized the Phoenician princess Europa and forced her to the island to initiate the Minoan bloodline. She bore Minos whose wife, Pasiphae, submitted to her passion for Poseidon’s bull, producing the minotaur.
In Minoan art, bulls are everywhere. Archaeologists have found bronze age ritual libation vessels – used for pouring liquid sacrifices to the gods – crafted into the shape of a bull’s head, and large gold rings depicting people leaping over bulls. The echoes of history, myth and ritual seem to have rippled through the generations, to later be reproduced and re-imagined by the ancient Greeks.
A bull fresco from Knossos Palace in Crete.Pecold/Shutterstock
It is therefore essential for people who want to understand the history of Europe to study the influence the Minoans have had on the ancient Greeks and modern Europeans – in particular, the evidence coming from the great digs conducted on the island in the early 20th century. These include the excavations by the British archaeologist Arthur Evans at Knossos, Crete, a vast site with complexity that may lend itself to the Greek labyrinth myth.
While the image of the bull is particularly widespread here, there is little association between this creature and women, as later appears in the myths. Women are linked with other animals, though, such as serpents, as shown by the snake goddess figurines that Evans found in the Palace of Knossos in 1903.
Snakes in Minoan art
These snake goddesses were found hidden in large stone-lined pits, in a very fragmentary state. Numerous riches were in this deposit: hundreds of shells, clay and stone vessels, clay seal impressions (used for documentation), Linear A inscriptions (a writing script) and animal bones.
The remains of five or six female figurines were found, but only two have been reconstructed. They have become icons of Minoan culture and poster girls for Crete, standing out due to their eye-catching costumes. These are tight, corseted jackets that leave the breasts bare, with floor-length full skirts – their heaviness serving to emphasise the exposed breasts even more.
The remains of the figurines found in the Palace of Knossos in 1903.Wiki Commons
The slightly larger one is a matronly figure with a tall, conical hat. Her snake-entwined arms are held at around 45 degrees, palms up and set approximately in line with her navel. Snakes drape over her as she stares straight ahead.
The second figure raises her bright white arms, bent at the elbow, up and out to her sides, flexed slightly forward. She clutches snakes, and a feline creature balances on her hat.
These figurines offer food for thought about the reconstruction processes that archaeologists undertake. First, Evans gave the title “goddess” to the larger figurine, and “votary” (meaning a worshipper who has taken vows) to the smaller one. This is arbitrary: we cannot know who these figurines represented, whether they were human, as a dignitary or priestess, or divine – we just sense they were VIPs.
Furthermore, when viewing these extraordinary objects in the Heraklion Museum in Crete today, the visitor may be unaware of the extent to which they have been reconstructed, and how much is an early 20th-century creation.
For example, the votary’s head, with its distinctive, wide-eyed stare, is entirely modern, as is her left arm, added soon after she was excavated. The object held in her right hand was broken off – only a very small piece of the original remained in her clenched fist. The reconstruction of snakes as the objects she holds is not so absurd – her sister has them running all over her as a comparison – but recent research has cast some doubt on what she originally held.
In addition to reconstructing the originals, people have also re-imagined these striking figurines in numerous ways – in replicas as souvenirs, as Barbie dolls, in graffiti (particularly in Heraklion) and in advertisements. They have appeared as book covers and inspired modern literature as well as visual and performative art.
Adaptations of them have come to life in poetry, opera, dance and music. A performer led the historical procession as the snake goddess in the opening ceremony for the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. The Many Lives of a Snake Goddess project, which I am part of, seeks to understand the cultural biographies of these objects. It shows their legacy has been great partly because we have recreated them in such varied ways.
Minoan Crete is important not only because of any claims made for its place as the fountainhead of European civilisation, but also because its art and archaeology have done so much to shape modern culture.
Ellen Adams, Professor in Classical Archaeology and Museum Access, King's College London
Nine paradise gardens in Iran are collectively listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site, the Eram Garden (pictured above) built in the 12th century is one of the most splendid. Cover picture of Franck Sorbier Paris Haute Couture AW25/26 by Andrea Heinsohn for DAM.
By Peter Edwell
Some of the most enduring ancient myths in the Persian world were centred around gardens of almost unimaginable beauty and opulence.
The biblical Garden of Eden and the Epic of Gilgamesh’s Garden of the Gods are prominent examples. In these myths, paradise was an opulent garden of tranquillity and abundance.
But how did this concept of paradise originate? And what did these beautiful gardens look and feel like in antiquity?
Pairi-daēza is where we get the word ‘paradise’
The English word “paradise” derives from an old Persian word pairidaeza or pairi-daēza, which translates as “enclosed garden”.
The origins of paradise gardens lie in Mesopotamia and Persia (modern Iraq and Iran).
The Garden of the Gods from the Epic of Gilgamesh from about 2000 BCE is one of the earliest attested in literature.
Some argue it was also the inspiration for the legend of the Garden of Eden in the book of Genesis. In both of these stories, paradise gardens functioned as a type of utopia.
When the Achaemenid kings ruled ancient Persia (550–330 BCE), the development of royal paradise gardens grew significantly. The paradise garden of the Persian king, Cyrus the Great, who ruled around 550 BCE, is the earliest physical example yet discovered.
During his reign, Cyrus built a palace complex at Pasargadae in Persia. The entire complex was adorned with gardens which included canals, bridges, pathways and a large pool.
One of the gardens measured 150 metres by 120 metres (1.8 hectares). Archaeologists found evidence for the garden’s division into four parts, symbolising the four quarters of Cyrus’s vast empire.
Technological wonders
A feature of paradise gardens in Persia was their defiance of often harsh, dry landscapes.
This required ingenuity in supplying large volumes of water required for the gardens. Pasargadae was supplied by a sophisticated hydraulic system, which diverted water from the nearby Pulvar River.
The tradition continued throughout the Achaemenid period. Cyrus the Younger, probably a descendant of Cyrus the Great, had a palace at Sardis (in modern Turkey), which included a paradise garden.
According to the ancient Greek writer, Xenophon, the Spartan general Lysander visited Cyrus at the palace around 407 BCE.
When he walked in the garden, astounded by its intricate design and beauty, Lysander asked who planned it. Cyrus replied that he had designed the garden himself and planted its trees.
Perhaps the ultimate ancient paradise garden was the legendary Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
In one tradition, the gardens were built by the neo-Babylonian King, Nebuchadnezzar II (605–562 BCE).
The gardens were so magnificent and technologically advanced they were later counted among the Seven Wonders of the World.
Perhaps the ultimate ancient paradise garden was the legendary Hanging Gardens of Babylon.mikroman6/Getty Images
In a later Roman account, the Hanging Gardens consisted of vaulted terraces resting on cube-shaped pillars.
Flowing water was a key feature, with elaborate machines raising water from the Euphrates river. Fully grown trees with vast root systems were supported by the terraces.
In another account, the Hanging Gardens were built by a Syrian king for his Persian wife to remind her of her homeland.
When the Sasanian dynasty (224–651 CE) came to power in Persia, its kings also built paradise gardens. The 147-hectare palace of Khosrow II (590–628 CE) at Qasr-e Shirin was almost entirely set in a paradise garden.
The paradise gardens were rich in symbolic significance. Their division into four parts symbolised imperial power, the cardinal directions and the four elements in Zoroastrian lore: air, earth, water and fire.
The gardens also played a religious role, offering a glimpse of what eternity might look like in the afterlife.
They were also a refuge in the midst of a harsh world and unforgiving environments. Gilgamesh sought solace and immortality in the Garden of the Gods following the death of his friend Enkidu.
According to the Bible, God himself walked in the Garden of Eden in the cool of the evening.
But in both cases, disappointment and distress followed.
Gilgamesh discovered the non-existence of immortality. God discovered the sin of Adam and Eve.
Paradise on Earth
The tradition of paradise gardens continued after the Islamic conquest of Persia in the 7th century CE.
The four-part gardens (known as chahar-bagh) of the Persian kingdoms were also a key feature of the Islamic period.
The Garden of Paradise described in the Quran comprised four gardens divided into two pairs. The four-part garden became symbolic of paradise on Earth.
The tradition of paradise gardens has continued in Iran to the present day.
Nine paradise gardens in Iran are collectively listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site. The Eram garden, built in about the 12th century CE, and the 19th-century Bagh-e Shahzadeh are among the most splendid.
Today, the word “paradise” evokes a broader range of images and experiences. It can foster many different images of idyllic physical and spiritual settings.
But the magnificent enclosed gardens of the ancient Persian world still inspire us to imagine what paradise on Earth might look and feel like.
Peter Edwell, Associate Professor in Ancient History, Macquarie University
Jörg Breu the Elder's painting, completed 1531-1550, Augsburg Labours of the Months: Summer. Deutsches Historiches Museum, Berlin.
By James Clark
England has entered its fourth heatwave of 2025. Historical comparisons for our current weather situation have seemed to beach at 1976.
Seared into the memory of many Britons over 55, that was the year when temperatures stuck at 30 degrees and there was no rain for nearly 50 days in a row. As a result, the UK government was forced to ration water. But Britain’s longest dry spell of the 20th century was not the worst for the wider continent.
For heat intensity and human cost across Europe we need to return to 2003. Back further, the heat and drought of 1911 easily eclipsed 1976 for European impact and before that 1757. And, above all, 1540, when there was no rainfall for almost the entire year. German chroniclers recorded that it was possible to walk across the Rhine.
Reaching further into the medieval past, the North Atlantic region passed through a climate anomaly between the 10th and 13th centuries. Research temperatures rose to around one degree celsius above the level that was typical at the turn of the 21st century.
Medieval Europeans became accustomed to hot, dry seasons – and they knew how to endure them.
Sadly, their experience cannot set us on a different course but it may have something to teach us about how to survive. Researchers are beginning to recognise that there are lessons for our own sustainability in the middle ages’ management of the environment, agriculture and food production. The same may be true in how they lived and worked under the sun.
Here are six tips from the middle ages to beat the heat:
1. Work flexibly
In June, July and August, start work at the first light of dawn, advised the 14th-century shepherd, Jehan de Brie, author of Le Bon Berger (The Good Shepherd).
Work would begin and end earlier to avoid the worst heat of the day.Wikimedia
In fact, all three medieval estates – those who worked, prayed and fought – compressed their tasks to the cooler morning hours in the long summer days. Clergy adapted their services to fit a shorter night and longer day and after Corpus Christi (June) their worship year wound down. Knighthood curbed its taste for tournaments. They would never lift a lance in August.
2. Wear the right hat
Although hardly a habit unique to the middle ages, it is only in the past half-century or so that the hat has lost its status as a staple, everyday item.
Hats were worn daily for practical as well as social reasons in European society.
Medieval images, manuscript illuminations, murals and panel paintings, gesture at the endless variety of shaped hats, soft caps and hoods they reached for as a matter of course. For high summer, the half-metre brim of a hat like the Swedish Lappvattnett hat may have been the norm.
3. Eat to lower body temperature
In the unrefrigerated world of the middle ages, food could still be cool. Salad leaves (known then as salat) were preferred because they were palatable and digestable in the heat.
Fish and meat dishes were cooled down for the season by being doused with verjuice (pressed, unripe grapes), vinegar and perhaps even pomegranate juice.
4. Try wild swimming
Swimming was an increasingly common, communal recreation in later medieval Europe. When monasteries allowed their inmates periods of downtime, besides blood-letting, they encouraged river and sea swimming for health, hygiene and general fitness.
A woodcut fro Everard Digby’s book on swimming.
In late medieval European cities crowded with tens of thousands, the breadth and depth of the Danube, Rhine, Seine and Tiber were an essential lifeline. The medieval theologian Everard Digby’s manual on the Art of Swimming, first published in 1587, described what may have long been a common sight – leaping and diving through the water “just like the summer’s roach”.
5. Use aftersun
Look after those burns. The monks of Citeaux Abbey were chronicled gathering herbs and roots in summer to salve their “perished skin”.
A 10th-century book of remedies, Bald’s Leechbook , recommended stalks of ivy sauteed in butter to apply to burns. Later, the recommendation was rosewater distilled from the flower’s petals.
Today we would say a bottle of aftersun or aloe gel will do.
6. Flee
When Emperor Charles V (king of Sicily and Naples from 1516 to 1554) found himself in a sweltering Rome with his young children, who were struggling in the rising temperatures, he made the household leave the city. High society generally left city palazzos to go up country and into shadier climes.
The author Giovanni Boccaccio recalled in his Decameron how the “dames of the city fly off” in summer to their country houses. King Richard II
(1377 until 1399) of England built a summer house at Sheen Palace (now Richmond palace) on the banks of the Thames to escape the close climate of the capital.
Even round-the-clock monastic institutions sometimes broke up and decamped to outlying country priories. Of course, it was rarely an option for those beneath them on the social scale.
James Clark, Professor of Medieval History, University of Exeter
The Viking era, circa 750 to 1050, is described as an “age of silver”. This form of wealth was so desired its acquisition drove their expansion out of Scandinavia.Painting (above) "Overseas Guests" by Nicholas Roerich, 1901.
By Jane Kershaw, University of Oxford
In the archaeology galleries of the Yorkshire Museum, an incredible Viking silver neck-ring takes centre stage. The ring is made of four ropes of twisted rods hammer-welded together at each end, its terminals tapering into scrolled S-shaped hooks for fastening behind the neck. Weighing over half a kilo, it makes a less-than-subtle statement about the wealth and status of its Viking owner some 1,100 years ago.
The neck-ring was part of a large silver and gold hoard found in 2012 by metal detectorists Stuart Campbell and Steve Caswell near Bedale in North Yorkshire. As the first precious object out of the ground, it was initially mistaken by Campbell for a discarded power cable.
Six years later, I got the chance to analyse the Bedale hoard, as it is now known, for its isotopes and trace elements. Alongside the neck-ring and a gold Anglo-Saxon sword pommel (probably acquired in England by these Viking raiders), the hoard contained a spectrum of cast-silver artefacts spanning the Viking age: Irish-Scandinavian artefacts from Dublin, rings from southern Scandinavia, and many cigar-shaped bars or ingots that could have been cast anywhere.
As an archaeologist investigating the historical secrets held by jewellery such as this, picking up these heavy objects and turning them over in my hands was a visceral experience. I felt connected with the desires, ambition and sheer force of these invaders from the north who had wreaked havoc on communities in northern England around AD900.
Indeed, the entire Viking age (circa 750-1050) is often described as an “age of silver”. This form of wealth was so desired that its acquisition was a primary driver of the expansion out of Scandinavia that the Vikings are most famed for. To acquire it, they were prepared to risk their own lives – and take those of many others.
The story of the Bedale hoard’s discovery. Video by the Yorkshire Museum.
Tens of thousands of silver objects and coins are known from hoards and settlements across the Scandinavian homelands of Norway, Denmark and Sweden, as well as far overseas – from England to Russia and beyond. The study of this silver’s origins opens a window on the vast web of connections these warrior-traders established – a study invigorated in recent years by scientific techniques drawn from geochemistry.
Now, our analysis of the Bedale hoard and other Viking valuables promises to change the story of when their fellow-Scandinavians began travelling thousands of miles to the east to secure the silver that so captivated them.
The origins of these ‘violent chancers’
The word “Viking” comes from the Old Norse víkingr, meaning someone who participated in a sea raid or military expedition. The seeds of the outburst of piracy and overseas expansion that characterised the Viking age were sown in the 5th and 6th centuries, following the demise of the Roman empire.
While Scandinavia was never actually part of the Roman empire, its fall severed important trade links and led to factional fighting. In addition, volcanic eruptions in the mid-6th century induced prolonged climatic cooling, leading to crop failure and famine. Together, these events fractured Scandinavian society: archaeologists can point to abandoned settlements and cultivation fields as evidence for community displacement and decline.
There was also a striking absence of silver in the region at this time, despite Scandinavia possessing native silver ores. While Roman silver plate and coin had previously reached Scandinavia and been melted down to make huge, stunning “relief” brooches worn by women, this flow of silver had declined sharply by the 6th century. In the following century, most jewellery was made of copper alloy – silver wasn’t being mined, and in this overwhelmingly agrarian society, precious metal was an unnecessary luxury.
In Scandinavia, where farming was challenging due to short summers and long harsh winters, wealth and power lay in good farming land and cattle – with payments typically made in butter, cloth, horses, sheep, hides and iron. As archaeologist Dagfinn Skre explains:
In an economy in which the supply of necessities was threatened, a man who had his moveable wealth in cows … would survive, but one who had it invested in metal would die. His metal would be close to worthless – for who would exchange their cows, butter or grain for metal in times of famine?
Yet out of this period of domestic struggle, a new and ambitious elite emerged in Scandinavia, particularly around the fjords of Norway and in the central Mälaren valley in Sweden – fertile regions which afforded access to both inland resources and coastal waterways.
Dubbed “violent chancers” by historian Guy Halsall, they seized abandoned land and valuable resources such as tar, furs and iron for weapons. They developed multiple, competing chiefdoms which they defended through a martial culture propped up by lavish consumption, trade and violence.
Archaeologists can point to tangible survivals of this culture: luxury imports such as glass claw beakers, elaborately furnished burials under huge mounds, monumental halls and full-on military kits. These warriors had shields decorated with bird-of-prey figures, crested helmets covered with silver foils, and swords with pommels covered in gold and garnets. They were not to be messed with.
Their success, coupled with these coastal people’s refined tradition of boat-building, enabled them to build and kit out fleets of ships. Surviving examples indicate these were long and narrow, with hulls made of overlapping (clinker) planking and shallow keels suitable for use in creeks, estuaries and beach landings. At first propelled by oar, the later adoption of sails enabled these ships to undertake long sea crossings.
In the late-8th century, Scandinavians began launching violent seaborne attacks on centres of wealth in neighbouring countries – first the coastal towns, monasteries and churches of modern-day Britain, Ireland and France, then later expanding their raids into Germany and Spain, and as far south as the north coast of Morocco. These centres of population provided human capital for the Viking slave trade, while enriching the invaders with portable wealth in the form of liturgical plates and reliquaries (from monasteries), silver coin and other high-status artefacts.
A raid on the north-east England island monastery of Lindisfarne in 793 – the first documented attack in the west – was probably launched from Norway. Its precise targeting suggests the raiders were well-informed about their destination, and no doubt attracted by stories of the riches held there. Writing afterwards, York cleric Alcuin described how the church had been “spattered with the blood of the priests of God, stripped of all its furnishing, exposed to the plundering of pagans”.
Alcuin blamed the attacks on his community’s “fornications, adulteries and incest” which have “poured over the land … even against the handmaids dedicated to God” – that is, nuns. The Vikings had made off not just with church treasure, but had also led away youths “into captivity”.
The capture of slaves was a common tactic. Some, like the boys from Lindisfarne, might have ended their days in Scandinavia or have been sold on at slave markets. But often, they were ransomed back to their communities for cash. After Vikings captured the abbot of St Denis in 858, for example, church treasuries “were drained dry” in order to meet their ransom demands of nearly 700lb of gold and 3,250lb of silver. “But even all this was far from being enough,” lamented the period’s chronicler Prudentius, bishop of Troyes.
The Viking pattern of raiding, looting and slaving is a dominant theme of 9th-century annals from Ireland, England and the Carolingian continent (spanning much of modern-day western Europe). In 842, Vikings made a surprise early-morning attack on the trading port of Quentovic in modern-day France. “They plundered it and laid waste,” recorded Prudentius, leaving “nothing in it except those buildings which they had been paid to spare”.
Accounts such as these record massive sums of silver extracted by the Vikings or offered as protection money. The extent of Viking accumulation of silver is staggering: the annals suggest that over the 9th century, the total loot in Viking hands amounted to 30,000lb of silver – or 7 million Carolingian pennies.
This stock is likely to have provided a stimulus to the economic development of nascent towns such as York and Lincoln in Scandinavian-settled areas of England, which are thought to have been more economically buoyant than their counterparts in “English” England.
Why did the Vikings come to value silver so highly? While the ownership of land and livestock was determined by strict laws of inheritance, silver could be obtained independently and with little resource investment, bypassing these normal routes of advancement. In this sense, silver embodied a new kind of dynamism coinciding with a different mode of behaviour.
These “nouveau rich” Vikings could not necessarily buy land with silver, but it gave them status – enabling people without inherited assets to acquire, and pass on, wealth. While the division of farmland and cattle upon marriage or death could be tricky, silver was ideally suited to such payments.
To these new generations of Scandinavians, silver became a standard of value that could guarantee investments, settle disputes and underwrite inheritance claims. It could be used to cement relationships – acting, as archaeologist Soren Sindbaek puts it, as a “virtual social glue”.
Silver analysis leads to a staggering result
But as well as value, silver stores information in its chemical composition that can reveal where it came from – something I have investigated as head of a research team over the last five years. We have analysed hundreds of silver Viking-age objects including from the Bedale hoard, with its rich mixture of rings and ingots cast by Scandinavians.
To make the hoard’s massive twisted silver neck-ring, for example, Viking metalcasters would have melted down numerous silver coins or small pieces of deliberately cut “hacksilver”. Once melted, the silver was cast into ingots, then gently hammered into long rods which were heated and twisted together to form the neck-ring.
The Viking hoard dating 850-950 found near Bedale, North Yorkshire, in October 2012.York Museums Trust via Wikimedia, CC BY-NC-SA
However, this process masked the original sources of that silver. The only way to tell where it came from would require techniques from geochemistry – so I took the objects to the British Geological Survey’s laboratory in the suburbs of Nottingham, where isotope scientist Jane Evans drilled tiny samples from each silver object to measure them for lead isotopes.
Just like the isotopes (of oxygen, strontium and sulphur) that are laid down in bone and teeth – from which we can trace people’s childhood origins – isotopes of lead can be used to trace silver back to its source. Most silver ores contain trace amounts of lead, the four stable isotopes of which vary according to the ore’s geological age and composition. These lead isotopes give each ore a “fingerprint”, which carries over into silver coins and other artefacts made from it.
Given the location of the Bedale hoard in North Yorkshire, I was confident that much of the silver would have come from local Anglo-Saxon and also Carolingian sources in mainland western Europe. In England, the Vikings started to settle from around 865. How they did so – whether by seizing land, purchasing it, or settling previously uninhabited areas – isn’t entirely clear, but the loot seized during their raids must have helped the process.
Plotting the ratios of the lead isotopes in the Bedale hoard for the first time, many of the results were as expected: several silver objects matched the ratios of Anglo-Saxon and Carolingian coinage, and other objects had been refined to raise their silver content prior to casting, using local lead in the process of cupellation.
Geochemical analysis of Bedale hoard items
Charts comparing lead isotope ratios of items in the Bedale hoard ((black crosses)) with possible sources of these silver elements. The nine ingots plot closely with Islamic sources of silver (in blue).Jane Kershaw, CC BY-NC-SA
But while many of the artefacts in the Bedale hoard yielded predictable results, a group of nine ingots stood out. Rather than matching western silver sources or local lead, they had the same isotope ratios as the Islamic currency of dirhams.
Dirhams minted between AD750 and 900 by the Umayyads and Abbasids, in what is today Iran and Iraq, were a particularly close match. Two of these ingots were marked with a cross, although whether this carried Christian meaning or was simply a way of marking out ownership is unclear. Either way, these massive ingots must have been cast in Scandinavia from Islamic silver dirhams and brought over to England in Viking hands, before being buried in North Yorkshire.
This result is staggering. The names of villages around Bedale like Snape and Newton-le-Willows sound very far from Mesopotamia – yet the Bedale hoard contained a substantial component of silver minted in Baghdad, Tehran and Isfahan.
These results have made us question the timing of the Viking age’s eastern expansion. While Islamic dirhams are plentiful in Scandinavia, they predominantly date to the 10th century. However, our analysis suggests that dirhams were already arriving in Scandinavia in the 9th century in much larger quantities than previously thought – with many being melted down as a raw material for casting.
To understand how this happened, we need to meet the Scandinavians who looked east rather than west in search of silver and other riches.
Who were the Scandinavians who went east?
While the Viking raids on western Europe are best-known thanks to the many surviving written accounts, some of their fellow-Scandinavians – largely drawn from modern-day Sweden – headed east, establishing riverine, trade-based settlements in what is now Russia and Ukraine.
The route led across the Baltic Sea and Gulf of Finland into northern Russia, transporting furs and slaves from northern Europe to the markets of the Islamic Caliphate. Finds of dirhams in Scandinavia represent the profit from this trade and show that it, too, had silver at its heart.
Over time, these Scandinavians adapted to life on the eastern waterways, adopting some cultural practices from local people such as the nomadic Khazars. The 10th-century diplomat, Ahmad ibn Fadlan, gave a frank description of this new community of traders – known as Rus rather than Vikings – who he met on the River Volga in northern Russia:
They are the filthiest of God’s creatures. They do not clean themselves after urinating or defecating, nor do they wash themselves after having sex …They are like wandering asses.
In 921, Ibn Fadlan had been sent by the Abbasid caliph, al-Muqtadir, as part of an embassy to the king of the Volga Bulgars, located near the modern town of Kazan in Tartastan, Russia. His travelogue-style account, or risāla, of that journey has become famous for the many eyewitness accounts of people he met along the way – including the Rus from northern Europe, whom he met as they traded with merchants from the Islamic empire at the market of Bulgar on the River Volga, roughly midway between Scandinavia and Baghdad.
The Rus people’s long and difficult journey from Scandinavia would have taken several months, involving multiple rivers and portages – when their boats had to be dragged across land. They traversed boreal forest and the Eurasia steppe, which was populated by various nomadic tribes. In this landscape, the only option was to travel by river – or, in winter, to use the river as an ice highway, substituting boats for sledges. But for the Rus, travelling this perilous eastern route, the Austrvegr, was worth the risk.
Painting of trade negotiations between Rus traders and Eastern Slav locals in the 10th century, by Russian artist Sergey Ivanov (1909).Wikimedia Commons
According to Ibn Fadlan, the Rus acted as middlemen, acquiring furs and slaves from hunter societies in forested areas and organising their shipment down river via trading posts that later developed into permanent settlements. The goods were sent to major markets such as Itil (on the Caspian Sea) and Bulgar, where they would be purchased by merchants from the caliphate.
What the Rus wanted in return for slaves and furs was dirhams: the fine silver coins, weighing roughly 3g each, which made up the currency of the Islamic Caliphate. The early 10th-century writer, Ahmad ibn Rustah, explained how the Rus “earn their living by trading in sable, grey squirrel and other furs. They sell them for silver coins which they set in belts and wear around their waist.”
Ibn Fadlan’s highly detailed travelogue explains that once a trader amassed 10,000 dirhams, he melted them down to create a neck-ring for his wife. After 20,000 dirhams, he made two. This was no doubt an exaggeration – such a neck-ring would weigh 65lb of silver – but the notion that a smallish group of traders acquired tens of thousands of silver dirhams is supported by archaeology.
For these Rus “traders”, just as important as the fur trade was the trade in enslaved people, who seem mainly to have been captured from the Slavic lands and what is now northern Russia, rather than western Europe. Scholars sometimes describe the Austrvegr as a trading route, but human trafficking can hardly be described as “trade” in the mercantile way that we understand it today. It was based on coercion and violence – the terrorising nature of Viking activity in the west was replicated in the east.
The Rus “treat their slaves well and dress them suitably”, Ibn Rusta wrote, “because for them they are an article of trade”. Yet it’s also clear that female slaves were exploited for sex. These reports underscore the grim reality of the Rus “trade” – that their insatiable quest for silver entailed human suffering.
Astonishingly, some 400,000 dirhams survive in Scandinavia and the Baltic, making the dirham the most common archaeological find type for the Viking age. However, most of these coins date to the first half of the 10th century.
Yet according to our analysis of the Bedale hoard, rather than the Viking age “starting” in the west, the eastern and western expansions may have happened in parallel from the end of the 8th century – with the wealth of the east a prime motivator of the Viking movement out of Scandinavia.
Today, in some of the place-names near Bedale in North Yorkshire, we see evidence of Scandinavian settlement: Aiskew is Old Norse for “Oak Wood”, and Firby means “Frith’s village”. But now we also have evidence of a connection between the Bedale hoard and Rus traders bringing silver back to Scandinavia from their exploits in the east – up to a century earlier than had been thought.
Laser analysis brings new discoveries
In our analysis of the Bedale hoard, lead isotopes alone weren’t enough to draw definitive conclusions. We needed additional data to confirm the Islamic origin of the nine ingots.
Not only do lead isotopes differ between source ores – so do trace elements. Gold and bismuth levels are especially helpful in evaluating the origin of silver, because, unlike other elements, they do not change when silver is melted down.
After digesting the results of the lead isotopes, I returned to the suburbs of Nottingham. With Simon Chenery, we put the Bedale hoard objects under an excimer laser (a type of ultraviolet laser), ablating tiny amounts of silver in order to record the levels of trace elements. This time, thrillingly, the results came through in real time.
They showed, for the Islamic-looking ingots, the telltale pattern of low gold that is characteristic of Abbasid silver. Abbasid dirhams of this date typically have gold levels below 0.4%, reflecting the low-gold character of nearby silver mines in the Taurus mountains, whereas gold levels in coins from western Europe are higher – around 1% in the late 9th century.
Ingots in the tray ready for laser ablation.Jane Kershaw, CC BY-SA
We discovered, too, that other artefacts were probably made from a mix of both western and eastern silver sources. This was true of the massive silver neck-ring as well as a smaller neck-ring from the hoard. Indeed, these two items appear to have been made from the same silver stock, suggesting that they travelled from their source to Bedale together.
While both could have been made in Scandinavia, the contribution of western silver raises the possibility that they were produced locally in Yorkshire, by metal casters with access to both distant, Islamic dirhams and local, Anglo-Saxon silver.
Our analysis shows the Islamic contribution to the Bedale hoard is more significant than we would have expected for a Viking hoard from England. In all, the nine ingots weigh 715g, equivalent to around 240 dirhams. And taking into account the Islamic contribution to the “mixed” silver artefacts, Islamic silver comprises around a third of the total weight of silver from the hoard (weighing around 3,700g).
Clearly, the Vikings were not only extracting silver from areas they raided and conquered, they were also bringing it in via their long-distance trade networks in the east. This result reveals the unexpected connectedness of the Vikings’ eastern and western expansions. Far from being separate phenomena, the profits of one directly fed into the activities of the other. Gains made from the Austrvegr may have enabled a group of Scandinavians to launch raids to the west and acquire further wealth and land.
In the west, these raids lasted for around 70 years from the late 8th century, spanning two or three generations. But eventually, the Vikings decided to settle. In northern England, where Bedale is located, they proceeded “to plough and to support themselves”, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle entry for 876 AD. Finds of female Scandinavian dress items from England suggest that whole families, not just retired warriors, settled there.
Many questions remain about the nature of this settlement – including whether the raiders-turned-settlers lived separately from or with the native Anglo-Saxon population, and how the settlement process was brokered. But the former Vikings and their families appear to have integrated relatively quickly, adopting Christian forms of burial, developing craft industries in towns, and embracing coinage as a means of exchange. Among the settled Scandinavian population, the violence ceased.
Silver remained an important medium for displaying values and even identities. From around 900, new Anglo-Scandinavian rulers minted their own coinage – sometimes preserving traditional features familiar to Anglo-Saxons, but also adding new aspects that proclaimed a Scandinavian background. Coins minted by the new rulers of York, a focus of Scandinavian settlement in northern England, could have a Christian cross on one side and a Thor’s hammer – an overt pagan symbol – on the other.
These Anglo-Scandinavian coins were in use across Scandinavian-settled regions of England and are testimony to the continued importance of silver to the Viking economy – now channelled into a form that was more regulated and acceptable to the local Anglo-Saxon community. Geochemical analysis of the silver in these coins also reveals glimpses of this process of assimilation. Our investigation of a handful of examples, using the same techniques of lead isotope and trace element analysis, suggests they were made mainly with Anglo-Saxon silver – but again with a modest contribution from Islamic dirhams.
The end of the eastern adventure
The geochemical analysis of silver helps reveal the reasons for the extraordinary expansion of the Vikings and their fellow Scandinavians – including pointing to the wealth gained in eastern markets as a major (and hitherto neglected) “pull” factor. To a greater degree than has traditionally been acknowledged, eastern silver travelled across the Scandinavian world of the Viking age.
The huge number of Samanid dirhams found in Scandinavia point to the 930s-940s as the most fruitful decades for the Scandinavian travellers’ trade with the east. The Rus’s slave and fur trade continued until around 950 – and silver analysis again helps to explain why it came to a fairly sudden end. Analysis of the silver content of dirhams shows their fineness declined sharply from the 940s and 950s – a reflection, no doubt, of the drying up of silver mines in Central Asia.
It did not take long for Vikings to seek out silver sources closer to home. They turned to coins from the area of modern-day Germany, struck with silver from the newly-exploited Harz mountains, which they obtained mainly through trade. The decline in the silver content of dirhams thus led to a major reconfiguration of Scandinavian trade routes.
From this point on, long-distance trade with the east declined significantly. The Vikings instead turned again to the west, establishing trade links with England and Germany. In the late 10th century, increasingly powerful Scandinavian kings also launched new seaborne raids, exploiting the weakness of English kings such as Æthelred II “the Unready” (978–1016) and initiating what has become known as the “second Viking age” in England.
These raids, launched from around 980, were bigger, more centrally organised, and successful. The Vikings obtained significant quantities of “Danegeld”: protection payments made in coin. Ultimately, in 1016, the Danish king Cnut established himself on the English throne. The nature of the relationship between England and Scandinavia during this period is also being explored through silver, in a project on coinage from the recently-discovered Lenborough hoard.
If the pattern identified for the Bedale hoard plays out across other Viking hoards, it will prompt a major re-evaluation of the movements of the earliest Scandinavian warrior-traders. As part of the same project, we have been analysing Viking silver hoards of a similar 9th-century date from Sweden and Denmark, the Carolingian continent, southern Scotland and the west coast of England. Preliminary results suggest a regional pattern, but with Islamic silver appearing to be dominant in many cases.
What’s clear is that in the 9th century, the Vikings were already awash in Islamic silver. Meanwhile, more undiscovered treasures like that found in Bedale lie quietly underground, waiting to reveal their secrets.
Jane Kershaw, Gad Rausing Associate Professor of Viking Age Archaeology, University of Oxford
Daniel Craig pictured above as James Bond; will the new film be inspired by cutting-edge, real-world technologies or turn away from the era of AI to standout?
By Christopher Holliday, King's College London
Development of a new James Bond film is underway at Amazon Studios, with the creator of Peaky Blinders, Steven Knight, now attached to write the screenplay, which will be directed by Denis Villeneuve.
The pair have given little away about what to expect from Bond 26. Knight said he wanted to do something “the same but different”, while Villeneuve said he would “honour the tradition” of the franchise. But a look back at how the films have dealt with key elements of Bond shows that following tradition can mean going in many different ways.
Take Bond’s toolbag of gadgets, which have been a part of the James Bond movies since their debut in the 1960s. Over the decades, the films have both leaned into and shifted away from the allure of hi-tech gadgetry in ways that plot key turning points in the franchise.
These peaks and troughs reflect what’s going on in the wider world as well as factors such as the influence of other successful film franchises. So with AI on the minds of many right now, the new film could embrace contemporary themes of technology. But re-booting the franchise when a new lead actor is cast is also often associated with a grittier or “back to basics” approach.
The first few Bond films starring Sean Connery, including Dr No (1962), From Russia With Love, and Goldfinger (1964) feature a smattering of spy technology. But by You Only Live Twice (1967), producers had opted for a space capsule hijack narrative – reflecting the influence of the US-Soviet space race – and a villain’s lair in a hollowed-out volcano.
However, the next entry – On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) centred largely on the emotional realism of Bond’s (George Lazenby) courtship and subsequent marriage to Tracy di Vicenzo (Diana Rigg). The lesser focus on technology coincided with a new Bond actor – a pattern to be frequently repeated later on in the franchise. But for other reasons, the shift in tone was, perhaps, to be expected.
Goldfinger: Q introduces Bond to his Aston Martin.
Bond author Ian Fleming was writing On Her Majesty’s Secret Service at his holiday home – Goldeneye – in Jamaica, while Dr No was being filmed nearby. The book was published on April 1, 1963, the day From Russia With Love began filming (the film was released in October that year). The less gadget-focused approach of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service could be seen as a possible jab by Fleming at what he saw as the cinematic Bond’s growing overreliance on the latest tech.
Journeying back through the franchise, it is not hard to find instances where moments of technological excess are countered almost immediately by a more pared down, character-centred set of priorities.
After On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Connery returned for one further Eon Productions film, Diamonds Are Forever (1971), which, like You Only Live Twice, featured a space-themed narrative. Live And Let Die (1973), Roger Moore’s debut as Bond, is somewhat more down to Earth and was the first film not to feature Bond’s gadgetmaster Q (who is referred to as Major Boothroyd in Dr No).
But a growing reliance on technology can be seen during the 70s Moore films, culminating with Moonraker (1979) – which was heavily influenced by Star Wars (1977) – in which Bond goes into space.
Moore’s follow-up, For Your Eyes Only (1981), was – as that film’s director John Glen noted – a film that went “back to the grass roots of Bond.” The global economic recession that took place between 1980 and 1982 certainly helped support this shift in tone.
For Your Eyes Only had a lower budget than Moonraker, so the filmmakers had to act in a similar way to their leading character, who made innovative use in the film of his shoelaces to climb up a rope on a sheer rock face in Greece.
The last few Roger Moore films have examples of Bond’s complex connection to technology, such as the computer microchip narrative of Moore’s final film A View to a Kill. But the next film, The Living Daylights (1987), was a return to the grittier Bond of the novels – with a focus on classic spycraft. From an action-packed opening in Gibraltar, the narrative moves to Bratislava where Dalton helps a KGB General defect to the west.
When Dalton departed after Licence to Kill (1989), which shows the influence of big-budget 80s Hollywood action movies, the series’ return after a six-year hiatus brought Bond into the information age. The cyberterrorist narrative of GoldenEye (1995), Pierce Brosnan’s debut as Bond, is fully indebted to a broader curiosity surrounding emerging internet sub-cultures.
The Living Daylights opening scene (official 007 YouTube)
Brosnan’s final outing, Die Another Day (2002) featured an Aston Martin that could turn invisible, which critics and audiences dismissed as a series nadir. The post-9/11 climate of protector narratives in defence of national security featured an altogether grittier action cinema counting Jason Bourne as its most popular hero. Die Another Day’s invisible Aston Martin and the indelible image of a computer-generated Bond surfing amid digital icebergs did not quite align with this state of post-millennial geopolitics.
Enter Daniel Craig, and the franchise’s emphatic declaration that it was going to do things for real, per the title of a documentary on Craig’s debut Casino Royale (2006). This was a statement of intent, anchored not just to a reduction in computer-generated imagery (CGI) behind-the-scenes, but equally by a turn away from the kinds of excessive technological wizardry that defined earlier instalments.
The absence of Q from Craig’s debut Casino Royale (2006) for the first time since Live and Let Die appeared to confirm a more “back to basics” feel. When the character did finally appear in Craig’s third film Skyfall (2012), Q (now played by Ben Whishaw) remarks to Bond: “Were you expecting an exploding pen? We don’t really go in for that anymore.”
Die Another Day trailer.
With another reboot on the way, the question now is whether the new film will draw inspiration from real-world technologies and push once more at the limits of technical innovation. Perhaps Villeneuve will exploit his science-fiction credentials finetuned in Arrival (2016), Blade Runner 2049 (2017) and his successful Dune films (2021-2024).
But given how contemporary cultural landscape is awash with the threat of AI, maybe the franchise does need to beat a hasty retreat from technology in order to stand out. Either way the filmakers will be able to argue they are sticking to tradition.
Christopher Holliday, Senior Lecturer in Liberal Arts and Visual Cultures Education, Department of Interdisciplinary Humanities, King's College London
