Robert Richards, who has died aged 65 of cancer, was an important figure in the story of the Glastonbury festival. He worked for the festival’s founder, Michael Eavis, for more than 30 years, and was producer of the 2006 film Glastonbury, directed by Julien Temple.
Robert made the film with backing from Eavis’s personal savings, and enlisted Temple to capture every moment of the festival as it happened in 2002 – stretching to 2,000 hours of film. At that point Glastonbury was facing something of a crisis, having suffered break-ins and serious overcrowding the year before, and Eavis had been compelled to put up a controversial “superfence” to keep out intruders. Although it took four years for the film to be released, it remains the defining record of the festival’s first half-century.
