What was it like to step inside the ‘Big Top’ of a 19th-century travelling circus?

Ad

In this bonus episode accompanying the HistoryExtra podcast series The Tiger Tamer Who Went to Sea, David Musgrove speaks to Dr John Woolf about the rise of the travelling fair, the railways that allowed its transformation into one of the biggest entertainment spectacles of the era, and the circus’s most famous and complicated characters, from PT Barnum to Buffalo Bill.

Authors

Dr David MusgroveContent director, HistoryExtra.com

David Musgrove is content director of the HistoryExtra.com website and podcast, plus its sister print magazines BBC History Magazine and BBC History Revealed. He has a PhD in medieval landscape archaeology and is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Ad
Ad
Ad