The woman single-handedly embroidering a full-scale replica of the Bayeux Tapestry

Since July 13, 2016, Swedish-born Mia Hansson has been hand-embroidering, at her home in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, a full-scale, 70-meter replica of the famous Bayeux Tapestry, which tells the story of the Norman conquest of England in 1066. She started out of boredom, not out of any passion for history — "I hate history," she told AFP — but ended up, against her will, an expert on the embroidered characters. The original is genuinely one of a kind: 623 hand-stitched figures, the only surviving pictorial account from that period — every other historical source from the time is written, not drawn — and an object that narrowly escaped destruction more than once over nearly 1,000 years, including during the French Revolution, when it was almost used to cover a military wagon. Along the way, she built an international community of more than 13,000 embroidery enthusiasts. The timing is almost perfect: right now, the original is arriving in England for the first time, in an exhibition at the British Museum, opening September 10 — for which Mia has just published a guide book. She no longer displays her own replica publicly, for safeguarding reasons, after receiving a serious purchase offer.