"In an inclusive public culture, Blake's is a great, passionate human voice"

PUTTING AWAY THE CAMPING GEAR AFTER THIS year's Glastonbury Festival, I found myself reflecting on the idea of alternative cultures. Since its origins, Glastonbury has always been political, and hosts a huge number of side discussions, concerts and seminars. It still gives money to Greenpeace, WaterAid and Oxfam, in addition to a host of local charities. As a festival of music and arts, it plays an important part in public discourse in these deeply polarised times - when, for instance, a journalist from The Times recently argued that the humanities are a waste of effort.

- MICHAEL WOOD

I was involved with festival founder Michael Eavis's Woods Stage this year, collaborating with West Country singer-songwriter Steve Knightley on a show exploring the Diggers, Peterloo, the Tolpuddle Martyrs and the Chartists. During it, Steve sang part of William Blake's poetry collection Songs of Innocence and Experience'. (Blake, we are told, often sang his own poems to friends.)

I like to see Blake (1757-1827) as a spiritual godfather of the Glastonbury Festival. Artist, illustrator, engraver, poet and activist, he conversed with spirits and saw angels in trees. Jacob Bronowski's 1965 book William Blake and the Age of Revolution sets Blake's voice in the context of the age of revolution. Often ridiculed, Blake sank into oblivion after his death, until the biography by Alexander Gilchrist, completed by his widow, Anne, and published in 1863. Since then, his status has only grown, confirmed by a stunning exhibition at Tate Britain not long ago.