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
Conspiracy | 5. Legends of the Knights Templar
Happily ever after? Love and marriage in Austen's era
History Behind the Headlines: the Post Office, US elections and Alexander the Great
Drag: a British history
Medieval Ireland: everything you wanted to know
Peking to Paris: the world’s first great motor race
Conspiracy | 4. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
Love: a weird & wonderful history
Life of the week: the Duke of Wellington
Ploughman's for the people: a culinary history of Britain
Chivalry: everything you wanted to know
Alexandria: the first modern city
Conspiracy | 3. Who killed JFK?
Masters of the Air: the real history behind the new show.
Life of the week: Spartacus
The West's enduring fascination with Asia
Seven Wonders of the Ancient World: everything you wanted to know
Nicholas Winton: the 'British Schindler'
Conspiracy | 2. Was Pearl Harbor an inside job?
Ireland's tangled relationship with empire
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Dan Snow’s History Hit
Front Row
Not Just the Tudors
The Ancients
Gone Medieval