Everyone knows how Harold died. Rather fewer know how thin the evidence is. The Bayeux Tapestry carries a panel captioned Hic Harold Rex Interfectus Est — here King Harold is killed — and beneath it a figure gripping an arrow that has struck him in the eye. That arrow may have been sewn in around 1800. Benoit's sketch of 1729 shows only a dotted line of old stitch holes, longer than the arrow we see now and with no fletching at all; Montfaucon's engraving the following year shows a solid line more like a spear held overhand. The arrow in its familiar form first appears in Charles Stothard's copy of 1816, made after the tapestry had been through the French Revolution. The written sources pull apart too. Twelfth-century Anglo-Norman historians — William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon — say Harold took an arrow to the head. The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio, written soon after the battle, says he was lanced and dismembered by four knights, one of them probably Duke William. Both may be true, in that order. The most famous arrow in English history is a good deal less certain than its fame.

Osfirth's own arrows flew the other way, of course — he is a Saxon, and it was Norman archers who did the damage at Hastings. W. Britain catch him a fraction after release: string still forward, both arms out, the follow-through of a man who has already stopped thinking about that shot. He is the second of three, between "Recene" with the arrow nocked and "Scotend" at full draw, and the sequence is the reason to own more than one. Stand them behind "Seaver" Saxon Shield Wall Defender, which is where archers belonged — behind the line, shooting over it.

Model: 62128 / W. Britain / 1/30 scale / matte finish / 1 piece set