Politician and Pioneer
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 26 November 2020
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The colourful life of Arthur MacMurrough Kavanagh overturns everything we think we know about disabled people’s lives in the 19th century. Born without hands and feet, he was an adventurous traveller and a Member of Parliament, a tiger-hunting landowner whose attempts to resist the rising tide of Irish nationalism were ultimately defeated, and whose amazing career has been largely forgotten. But how did his first biographer meet the challenge of writing his life?
New Generation Thinker Clare Walker Gore of the University of Cambridge discusses the gaps in his published biography and what attitudes they reflect.
The New Generation Thinkers scheme is ten years old in 2020. Jointly run by BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council, each year it offers ten academics at the start of their careers a chance to bring fascinating research to a wider public. This week we hear five essays from this last decade of stimulating ideas.
This Essay was recorded in front of an audience at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead in 2015.
Producer: Zahid Warley
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right? |
| 0:23.3 | It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music |
| 0:27.0 | when it's out of ice cream. |
| 0:28.8 | Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:36.1 | In 1849, a young Irish nobleman set out with his elder brother and tutor on an extraordinary journey. |
| 0:46.5 | They planned to travel from Scandinavia to India over land on horseback, a distance of well over 4,000 miles across exceptionally dangerous terrain. |
| 0:58.3 | What makes this more extraordinary is that Arthur McMurrah Kavana, the young man in question, |
| 1:04.0 | had neither hands nor feet, having been born with short stumps for arms and legs. |
| 1:09.1 | But by the age of 18, when they set off, he had a reputation |
| 1:12.9 | for stellar horsemanship. He was a keen huntsman and a crack shot. In fact, he was the only one of the |
| 1:20.5 | trio who set out from Ireland who survived the journey. Back home, he continued to defy the odds. |
| 1:27.3 | Despite having been born the fourth son, |
| 1:29.9 | a series of accidents led to his inheriting both the title and the family seat at just 23. |
| 1:37.2 | He seems to have thrown himself into the challenge of redeeming the family fortunes. In due course, |
| 1:42.8 | he became a popular and solvent landlord, as well as a |
| 1:46.0 | magistrate, a member of Parliament, and father of a numerous family. His was a life of respectable |
| 1:52.3 | eminence, but also of improbable adventure. There are many dramatic stories to be told, about nocturnal |
| 2:00.0 | sorties riding out to spy on rebels during |
| 2:02.8 | the Fenian Rising, which may have led to his banishment abroad and that extraordinary journey |
| 2:07.3 | to India, about his exotic menagerie and his pet bear, Bessie, about his crushing political |
| 2:13.8 | defeat at the hands of the Nationalists in the election of 1880, from which he never |
| 2:17.9 | recovered. It's quite a story by any standards, an eventful life lived in a turbulent period |
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