Bob Carlisle was a Victorian influencer and minor celebrity; a global seafarer, circus clown and lion tamer, and Britain’s original long-distance ‘wheelbarrow pedestrian’. This new six-part series sees David Musgrove recover the story of this widely forgotten and larger-than-life character. In this first episode, David talks to historians Valerie Sanders and Bob Nicholson to explore Bob’s early life and investigate what his experiences can tell us about life-writing and the media in 19th-century Britain.
The HistoryExtra podcast is produced by the team behind BBC History Magazine.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Welsh mythology: everything you wanted to know
Tying the knot: 500 years of wedded bliss and marital misery
Conspiracy Revisited: The JFK assassination – 95 per cent certain?
The British empire's divisive legacy
Saladin: life of the week
Back in the USSR: the Soviet Sixties
Anglo-Saxon kingdoms: everything you wanted to know
Dinosaurs: a Victorian obsession
Tiger Tamer | 6. battling against Bovril
How was Elizabeth I shaped by her childhood?
Joan of Arc: life of the week
Leftovers: how our ancestors battled food waste
WW1's eastern front: everything you wanted to know
Eric 'Winkle' Brown: Britain's most extraordinary pilot
Tiger Tamer | 5. crazy about wheelbarrows
Will the real Jesus please stand up?
Mary Wollstonecraft: life of the week
An obscenity trial that shocked Victorian Britain
The Capetians: everything you wanted to know
Lothar II vs Theutberga: a marriage scandal that shook the ninth century
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Dan Snow’s History Hit
Gone Medieval
History Unplugged Podcast
Not Just the Tudors
History Daily