All human life is present and cheerfully incorrect in William Powell Frith’s famous painting The Derby Day. Lords and ladies, rakes and scoundrels, circus performers and card sharps, high society and lowlifes and everything in between, all cheek-by-jowl at one of the very few events in Victorian Britain at which the classes mingled with relative freedom.
If Frith were to return to Epsom for the Derby next month, 167 years since the one he initially sketched in 1856, he would still find a rich assortment of characters both in the grandstands and roaming free on the Hill – with, in all likelihood, one new addition. The pink T-shirted activists from the recently-formed group Animal Rising, some of whom delayed the start of the Grand National by 15 minutes last month and also staged anti-racing protests at Ayr and Doncaster in recent weeks, are long odds-on to have Epsom on their target list too.
