The famous Bayeux Tapestry has arrived in Britain for the first time in almost 1,000 years, going on display at the British Museum after a tightly guarded, high-tech operation that saw the 11th-century artefact moved in overnight and brought across the Channel. Its arrival has reignited a long-running scholarly debate over an unusual question: exactly how many penises are embroidered across the medieval artwork, which was woven to celebrate the Norman king William the Conqueror's victory over the Saxon King Harold at the 1066 Battle of Hastings.

The dispute centres on the work of Professor George Garnett, an Oxford medieval history expert who claims to be the first person to count the tapestry's genitalia, arriving at a total of 93, with William the Conqueror's horse said to boast the largest. Garnett argues that most of the depictions appear on horses and that they are not merely bawdy detail but serve to "alert viewers to themes of betrayal and deceit" central to the tapestry's account of the Norman invasion. Writing for the BBC's History Extra website, he noted that the artefact "can arouse obsessiveness of many kinds in modern historians".