Jeanne Baret, first woman to sail round the globe
Great Lives
BBC
4.2 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 21 December 2021
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It all began with a small portrait in the Greenwich museum - of a sexless looking character in wide stripey trousers. Actor Nina Sosanya says she was immediately intrigued. Who was this? Why was she here? And did she really sail round the world dressed as a man? She discovered that Jeanne Baret was a poor but ingenious French woman who joined Louis Antoine de Bougainville's circumnavigation in 1763. She was dressed as a man because women were not allowed on board. But this was only the beginning of a crazy, often terrifying ordeal. Joining Nina Sosanya is Glynis Ridley, author of the Discovery of Jeanne Baret. Together they piece together this adventurer's life, from her birth in rural France to her passage round the globe, abandoned on Mauritius and getting back home seven years after everyone else.
Nina Sosanya has starred in Staged, Killing Eve and W1A, often playing extremely likable characters who keep their head while everyone else goes down in flames.
The producer in Bristol is Miles Warde
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, let me ask you, sir, have you heard George's podcast? |
| 0:06.1 | Me and Ben Brick are back with a blast, this time with stories from Africa's past. |
| 0:11.0 | Not too distant, unsolved mysteries, unsung heroes from untold histories, I'm trying |
| 0:16.9 | to make sense of the present day, join me on this journey by pressing play. |
| 0:23.8 | Have you heard George's podcast? |
| 0:25.7 | Chapter four. |
| 0:27.1 | Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:29.4 | OK, all right. |
| 0:32.6 | Let's go. |
| 0:34.6 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:38.8 | My guest today is best known to me as an employee of the BBC, but not the real one. |
| 0:44.6 | She's an actor, known for smooth, articulate characters caught up in chaos. |
| 0:50.3 | Hello. |
| 0:51.3 | In the Marvelous Spoof series, W1A, set in the building where we now sit, she played |
| 0:57.4 | the producer who, due to BBC rationalisation, had to start making useless programmes, such |
| 1:02.8 | as Britain's tastiest village. |
| 1:05.4 | She also appeared in Killing Eve, last tango in Halifax, his dark materials, and the |
| 1:10.8 | lovely lockdown hit staged. |
| 1:13.6 | Welcome to Great Lives, Nino Shasanya. |
| 1:16.6 | Whom have you picked? |
| 1:18.2 | I have picked Jean-Barre, first known woman, to circumnavigate the globe. |
| 1:26.1 | And I came across this lady who I'd never heard of in Greenwich Maritime Museum, in the |
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