#33 BIG TOP, BIG DREAMS - SARAH WEBB

10/14/21 • 42 min

A chance meeting with a professor of circus fired children’s writer Sarah Webb’s imagination and led to her latest novel.

Sarah learned how Ireland had the second circus in the world in the late 1700s, with stunt riding, clowns, acrobats - and bee charming, or riding with a necklace of live bees.

Her novel, The Little Bee Charmer of Henrietta Street (for eight to 12-year-olds), was the result. It blends tenement life in 1911 Dublin with circus life.

Presented and produced by Martina Devlin

More on the book here: https://obrien.ie/the-little-bee-charmer-of-henrietta-street

A chance meeting with a professor of circus fired children’s writer Sarah Webb’s imagination and led to her latest novel.

Sarah learned how Ireland had the second circus in the world in the late 1700s, with stunt riding, clowns, acrobats - and bee charming, or riding with a necklace of live bees.

Her novel, The Little Bee Charmer of Henrietta Street (for eight to 12-year-olds), was the result. It blends tenement life in 1911 Dublin with circus life.

Presented and produced by Martina Devlin

More on the book here: https://obrien.ie/the-little-bee-charmer-of-henrietta-street

Previous Episode

#32 Myth-Making Michael Collins

Michael Collins is the most famous casualty of the Irish Civil War but there is a lot of “what-if-ery”about him, says Ireland’s best-known historian.

“Some “vey fanciful” claims are about the kind of leader he would have become if he had survived, according to Diarmaid Ferriter.

He says: “We have to be careful of investing too much in the idea of the lost leader because Collins shared many of the limitations and the prejudices, as well as the considerable abilities, of his generation.”

Professor Ferriter notes that Michael Collins was “a serious celebrity” at the time of his death in 1922. He dismisses conspiracy theories about his shooting at Béal na Bláth in Co Cork as “far-fetched”.

Between Two Hells: The Irish Civil War by Diarmaid Ferriter is published by Profile Books. More here: https://profilebooks.com/work/between-two-hells/

Podcast presented and produced by Martina Devlin

Next Episode

#34 Carlo Gébler on the Power of Greek Myths

Famously, King Oedipus killed his father and married his mother. That's what everyone knows about the Greek myth. But Carlo Gébler sets out to humanise the story.

He talks about his novel I Antigone set in the seventh century BC, and why Antigone is his narrator: because she had "skin in the game" as both daughter and sister to Oedipus.

He says the story remains compelling thousands of years later because it is a family tragedy.

For more on Carlo Gébler's novel:

https://www.newisland.ie/fiction/i-antigone

Presented and produced by Martina Devlin