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
Life of the Week: Frederick Douglass
The hidden history of women in intelligence
The Bloomsbury Group: everything you wanted to know
'Madness' and the supernatural
Boston Tea Party | 5. A complex legacy
Why were the Romantics obsessed with Mount Vesuvius?
Life of the Week: Stalin
James Longstreet: Confederate Judas
Medieval popes: everything you wanted to know
A history of song: from Schumann to Sting
Boston Tea Party | 4. The crackdown
Aztec warfare
History Behind the Headlines: Elections, ‘panda diplomacy’ and the word of the year
How spies shaped the modern world
The Habsburgs: everything you wanted to know
The medieval Welsh Marches: identity on the frontier
Boston Tea Party | 3. The destruction of the tea
Sherlock Holmes: the real history that inspired the detective stories
Life of the week: Queen Victoria
Merry Christmas from the HistoryExtra podcast
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Dan Snow’s History Hit
Gone Medieval
History Unplugged Podcast
History Daily
Not Just the Tudors