TOM STONE sings the praises of one of the oldest open-air festivals in Britain
‘The main task is, indeed, to awaken the women’s class consciousness and to incorporate them into the class struggle’ - Clara Zetkin
MICHAL BONCZA rounds up a series of images designed to inspire women
Liberty Leading the People, Eugene Delacroix; Rupert Garcia, Libertad Para Los Prisoneras Politicas! Freedom for political prisoners!, 1971, featuring Angela Davis who was held in a Manhattan prison at the times
[Erich Lessing Culture and Fine Arts Archives/cc; Rupert Garcia/Smithsonian Institution Archives/CC] 
Chris Searle speaks to accordionist KAREN STREET
MAYER WAKEFIELD speaks to Urielle Klein-Mekongo about activism, musical inspiration and the black British experience
KEVIN BRYAN reviews new releases by The Outlaws, Mark Radcliffe & David Boardman, Clarence White
BOB NEWLAND reviews a book that will take many back to the final years of apartheid in South Africa
GAVIN O’TOOLE examines the fatal relationship between environmental crimes and politics in Brazil and the inspiration provided by Indigenous people
ONE of the most enduring revolutionary images in Western art is that of Liberty Leading the People painted by Eugene Delacroix in the Autumn of 1830 as a response to the July revolution of the same year, which saw France swap the House of Bourbon for the House of Orleans, an error that was only corrected in 1848 with the founding of the Second Republic.
The figure of Liberty is popularly referred to as “Marianne,” which symbolises, in popular consciousness, both ordinary people and the manifestation of their political aspirations: the Republic. The boy next to her with two pistols is believed to have inspired Gavroche in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables.
The allegory of the female figure is rooted in language — in French, France, Republic, Liberty and Reason are feminine nouns.
More from this author
MICHAL BONCZA highly recommends a revelatory exhibition of work by the doyen of indigenous Australians’ art, Emily Kam Kngwarray
Despite an over-sentimental narrative, MICHAL BONCZA applauds an ambitious drama about the Chinese rescue of British POWs in WWII
Strip cartoons used to be the bread and butter of newspapers and they have been around for centuries. MICHAL BONCZA asks our own Paul Tanner about which bees are in his bonnet
New releases from Hannah Rose Platt, Kemp Harris, and Spear Of Destiny
