Kate Evans

Now, this type of transaction really happened, didn't it?

And there's a whole other layer that's a sort of imperial and colonial layer too, isn't there, to this bigger story?

And this is a story about how spectacle and so-called deformitomania... Which is what the magazine Punch called it, deformitomania.

And so this is happening during the reign of Queen Victoria, a woman who you make clear in the novel was actually fascinated by these types of exhibitions.

But how do you tell this story without replicating those freak show sort of attitudes?

And Nell, the Queen of the Moon and Stars is a character who flies above the audience.

But when she comes back down to the ground, what you've done is you've created a family for her, a sort of community of performers.

Tell us about that.

A wonderful character.

But entwined with the travelling circus of performers are stories of the travelling circus of the Crimean War, not so many years before.

Why did you want to combine those two stories?

And he is a very charming character.

He's a sort of sweet and melancholy man who, and his skills as a photographer, you know, continue in his life at the circus working with his brother.

And he makes carte de visite.

Now, what are they?

And did you look at photographs of circus performers, 19th century circus performers?

I can feel the texture of the research in the, even there's detail of how Nell sugars the violets that she's selling as the story opens.

But if I can ask you about other books that might sit beside or behind Circus of Wonders, I'm curious about other sort of fictional representations of circus or other stories of the 19th century, or maybe there's some other context you'd put your book in.

So if you put Circus of Wonders on a bookshelf, what sits beside it?

So we've got Angela Carter and Feathers.