Attack of the badger-men: can women find a place in the violent and wine-soaked carnivals of southern France?

At the start of Lent, men dressed as rampaging creatures pursue women through medieval villages. The families who maintain these traditions are sceptical of change, but increasingly female revellers want to play more active parts In the early afternoon of Ash Wednesday, dread creatures dressed in white walk the streets of the medieval southern French village of Cournonterral. They wear long masks of black badger hair, top hats crowned by feathers and sprays of boxwood, and body armour compris...

By Daniella Blake