Great Lives is a podcast from BBC Radio 4. I hope you enjoy the program.

Explorer, adventurer, soldier, author, poet, translator, sexologist. A waif, a stray, a blaze of light without a focus is how

he described himself. He brought us the Kama Sutra and spoke 29 languages. Today's great life is the 19th century

Sir Richard Francis Burton and he's championed by the author Monica Alley. Good heavens, Monica. Why this racy, racist, rascally character and why are you as his champion?

So many things about his life that I find intriguing, his achievements as an explorer, as a literary figure,

as a linguist and a translator in particular, when he published 43 books just on his travel and journeying alone.

Do you like him, Monica?

I do. I like him as a character. He was a deeply flawed character. He was an altogether a success.

Probably the book we associate him most with is the Kama Sutra which he brought us and the perfume garden both sex manuals.

Do you think he published the work in England deliberately to provoke controversy and

rock the establishment or was he just obsessed with sex?

Well, I don't think it's in either or situation.

It could be both.

He studied sexual customs and practices very closely throughout his life from India to Africa and also European society.

So the Victorians being the prudes that they were, he often was unable to publish all of his observations.

A lot of them were in footnotes.

He actually had a quite a sophisticated understanding of female sexuality in particular so where

he certainly had a bit of practice he He did have practice but he also had an understanding that was ahead of his time.

Yes. I would say Burton saw that the average educated English woman, in fact far from being without any

sexual feeling at all, he said that she lived in a rustle of imaginary copulation

that was there. It's great praise. It is I love that phrase and he was like you

know he was a great writer as well. You can almost hear the petticoats can't you?

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