Wally Hope

Wally Hope (1947–1975) was a name by which Philip Russell (born Philip Alexander Grahame Russell on 9 August 1947) was known.

Phil was a visionary and a free-thinker, whose life has had a profound influence on many in the culture of the UK Underground and beyond. He was an important figure in what may loosely be described as 'the organisation' of the Windsor Free Festival from 1972 to 1974, as well providing the impetus for the embryonic Stonehenge Free Festival. It is believed that he was born into a wealthy family, and was due to inherit a considerable sum when he attained the age of 30 years; his guardian was the BBC radio and television announcer John Snagge, according to a newspaper report of Wally's death.

While in London during the early 1970s, he fell in with a group called the Dwarves, taking their name from the Dutch Provo group the Kabouters. Described as “a kind of Notting Hill version of the Yippies in America: a joke-prankster group,” he adopted the name "Wally Hope" for himself, under which he would acquire the status of countercultural folk hero. The name Wally derived from a popular festival cry (a kind of “Everyman” joke that arose when the crowd began echoing the name of a lost dog being summoned by his owner at the last Isle of Wight Festival) and he had the word “Hope” embroidered on a shirt that his grandmother had embroided for him “became his trademark: a riot of spectacular colour with the eye of Horus in the middle banked by a rainbow.”

Whilst at a well-known hippie café on the Spanish Island of Ibiza he first came up with the idea of a free festival at Stonehenge. He “wanted to claim back Stonehenge (a place that he regarded as sacred to the people and stolen by the government) and make it a site for free festivals, free music, free space, free mind.”

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