In this essay, Robert Leach discusses the gradual awakening of British radicals after the sleepy 1950s, especially some of the festivals that they mounted.

Robert Leach is former lecturer at Edinburgh and Birmingham Universities, freelance theatre director, and writer. His most recent works include the two-volume Illustrated History of British Theatre and Performance, the biography Sergei Tretyakov: A Revolutionary Writer in Stalin’s Russia, and the poetry collection Unraveled Knots.

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