Shirley Collins: "When I sing I feel past generations standing behind me"

LEWES, EAST SUSSEX, is a lovely, slyly rebellious town. Pretty shopfronts and streets mask its political history: Thomas Paine wrote his first pamphlet here demanding better rights for workers; Irish Easter Rising revolutionaries were interned in its prison, and Lewes Bonfire remains a heartland of anti-establishment fervour every November, with flaming crosses paraded and effigies burned.