Voices Of The Rising

In this episode Zoë has delved into the NLI collection to find a book that brings together a number of interests for writer Adrian Duncan: engineering, Victorian tables, the natural world and a link to Germany where Adrian lives. The Natural History of Cage Birds is a book by JM Bechstein - it explores 'Their Management, Habits, Food, Diseased, Treatment, Breeding, And The Methods Of Catching Them'. It gives details, and to modern sensibilities, shocking advice for keeping birds in captivity. Adrian was interested in the engineering and design of these cages and how they tell us as much about Victorian society and ambitions as they do about birds. Adrian has written a specially commissioned short story for this episode that shows some of the overlapping absurdity of the Victorian era and the Celtic Tiger. In it the narrator comes across a slip of paper tucked into Bechstein's book, but who wrote it and why? Adrian Duncan is an artist and award-winning writer based between Ireland and Berlin. He is the