Free Thinking

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Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

The ideas shaping our lives today - with artists and thinkers in debates and interviews.

The ideas shaping our lives today - with leading artists and thinkers in extended interview and debate.

Free Thinking: Trapeze acts and circus celebrities

Trapeze acts and circus celebrities

BBC Radio 4 - Free Thinking, Trapeze acts and circus celebrities

Shahidha Bari hears about aerialists Lillian Leitzel and Pablo Fanque.

John Woolf and Kate Holmes share their research into circus performers from the 1830s and 1920s, and Naomi Paxton compares researching panto with performing in one.

From a Norwich workhouse to performing as "The American Voltigeur" - Pablo Fanque, or William Darby as he was born, was a star of 1830s circus in Britain. Nearly a hundred years later one of the names topping the bill was Lillian Leitzel. Kate Holmes is also an aerial performer and she shares her research into female aerialists with John Woolf, author of Black Victorians. Plus the presenter Shahidha Bari is also joined by New Generation Thinker Naomi Paxton who compares researching early music hall and pantomime performers with the experience of taking part in a professional panto and by novelist Lianne Dillsworth whose novel Theatre of Marvels imagines a Black British actress who performs at Crillick's Theatre as the "Great Amazonia".

Producer: Sofie Vilcins

Black Victorians: Hidden in History by John Woolf and Keshia N Abraham is out now. John Woolf has also published The Wonders: Lifting the Curtain on the Freak Show, Circus and Victorian Age.

Naomi Paxton made a Sunday Feature for Radio 3 about suffragette theatre and Punch and Judy https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0008qdl She is now playing the baddie, Queen Rat, in Dick Whittington at The Theatre Chipping Norton.

Lianne Dillsworth's Theatre of Marvels is out now.
Female Aerialists in the 1920s and Early 1930s: Femininity, Celebrity and Glamour by Kate Holmes is out now.

You can find more programmes on Free Thinking about Victorian life
Oskar Jensen and Fern Riddell are amongst Matthew Sweet's guests in a conversation about Victorian Streets https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0017v2s

Kathryn Hughes talks Victorian Bodies and George Eliot https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b088jl64
How the Victorians tried to make us sound the same looks at ideas about accents and reading https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001fng4

Matthew Sweet looks at the career of impresario Philip Astley and 250 years of the circus https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09k8gyw
How we talk about sex and female bodies, including Saartje Baartman https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000f5n6

Swing High short documentary film was directed by Jack Cummings, and was produced by Metro Goldwyn Mayer in 1932.

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