The British Museum is trying to make amends with visitors caught up in a scheduling clash around its blockbuster Bayeux Tapestry exhibition. The museum is refunding ticket holders who were turned away halfway through the day on Wednesday, when it closed early to prepare for a gala dinner attended by Princess Anne. September has been an intense month for the museum. The Bayeux Tapestry exhibition, showing the nearly thousand-year-old embroidery in England for the first time since it was made, sold out and drew huge crowds — along with visitor complaints and even lawsuits, according to reports. The institution is now attempting to smooth over the missteps. The early closure was arranged to accommodate a dinner hosted with Samsung, the museum's long-term corporate sponsor, celebrating its "Korea" exhibition, which opened the following day. Visitors who had paid for sold-out Bayeux Tapestry time slots found themselves ejected mid-visit to make way for the reception. The museum is now refunding affected ticket holders, acknowledging that the timing disadvantaged people who had planned — and in many cases travelled — to see one of the year's most in-demand shows. The sold-out status of the exhibition made the disruption harder to repair: unlike an ordinary gallery closure, there are no easy alternative slots to offer. The episode lands at a sensitive moment. The tapestry's return to England from France has been treated as a landmark cultural event, and the museum's handling of visitor access has already drawn scrutiny. The refunds represent an effort to draw a line under a week in which one of the country's most visited exhibitions generated as many headlines for its logistics as for its contents.