By Ruth Kinna and Clifford Harper.

Educator, poet, dramatist, novelist, movement historian, orator and  agitator Louise Michel rose to prominence during the Paris Commune  (1870-71) and  was one of some 4,500 Communards deported to New  Caledonia in 1872. Michel acquired a commanding public profile in the  last decades of the nineteenth century - her mere presence at a meeting  was enough to guarantee a large and enthusiastic audience and a 50,000  crowd turned out  for her funeral in 1905.