Printed in the festival’s theatre and circle fields on a vintage 1957 Heidelberg OHZ-S cylinder letterpress, the paper’s Thursday edition was led by an exclusive interview with 88-year-old dairy farmer and sometime party organiser, Michael Eavis.
Eavis, who co-founded Glastonbury Festival in 1970, spoke to the Glastonbury Free Press about a range of issues, from why the offside rule in football ought to be scrapped (“There would be more goals. And if there are more goals, it would be more fun!”) and why social issues are so key to the festival’s heart.
As well as pieces on new venues at the 210,000-person festival, including a brand-new stage dedicated to South Asian culture, Thursday’s edition interviewed BBC News analysis editor and amateur DJ Ros Atkins about his love of drum ‘n’ bass, Greenpeace executive directors on the state of UK politics, and Bombay-born disco diva Asha Puthli on her whirlwind career.
Published in two editions over the festival – Thursday and Sunday – the Glastonbury Free Press offers music fans the chance to see how printing is done by hand, with the hot-metal typeset Heidelberg churning out copies each day.
Around 30,000 copies are distributed across the site each year.
Speaking to the BBC for the paper’s 10th anniversary in 2023, Glastonbury co-organiser Emily Eavis said: “We like the idea of providing a newspaper. It’s quite old school now, many people don’t read newspapers anymore, but we produce this paper which is just entirely for the world that we’re in for these five days.”
Glastonbury Festival takes place 26 June to 1 July, with headline sets from Dua Lipa, Coldplay, SZA and The National, and Shania Twain taking up the festival’s Sunday afternoon legend slot.
