Tickling tigers one day, and cracking jokes to expectant crowds the next, Bob Carlisle was a circus showman, agent, clown and big cat tamer. In the third episode of our new series on this larger-than-life character of the Victorian age, David Musgrove speaks to historian John Woolf to consider Carlisle’s hair-raising life in the travelling circus, and how it helps us to understand the world of Victorian show business.
The HistoryExtra podcast is produced by the team behind BBC History Magazine.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The First Crusade | 2. On the road
1960s Britain: smashing the status quo?
Life of the week Trailer
Disney at 100
Weimar Germany: everything you wanted to know
Slave traders: the men who built a brutal empire
The First Crusade Trailer
The First Crusade | 1. The call to arms
Re-examining women in the Roman empire
History Behind the Headlines Trailer
Is black history still being overlooked?
Cat history: everything you wanted to know
The Huxleys: how one family shaped our view of nature
Great Reputations: Gandhi
The Cultural Revolution: a Chinese catastrophe
The brutal WW2 battle for Italy
David Mitchell on a new history of England’s monarchy
Archaeology’s golden age: everything you wanted to know
One day in the British empire
Great Reputations: Emmeline Pankhurst
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Dan Snow’s History Hit
Gone Medieval
History Unplugged Podcast
History Daily
Not Just the Tudors