The Dog Days’ King

Jorgen Jorgensen, born in Copenhagen, Denmark to a watchmaker, lived the kind of life most seen in picaresque novels like Voltaire’s Candide or Thackeray’s Barry Lyndon - but another way to sum him up would be he lived the life of that guy in Sinatra’s That’s Life - He was a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn and a King. There is another P word that, sadly, summed the adventurer’s life up - one that cast a shadow over much of his later life.  Sources this week include:  The Collected Works of Marcus Clarke - by Marcus Clarke.  The Convict King - by Jorgen Jorgensen.  And Australia’s Most Unbelievable True Stories - by Jim Haynes.  The blog post of the episode is here. Support the show on Patreon for just $2 US a month and get access to exclusive content. I’m currently revamping, and will be dropping re-recorded bonus content weekly for the next two months.  February’s episode, out on 1 February is Yasuke.     Please leave a like and review wherever you listen. The best way you can help support the show is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays. Tales of History and Imagination is on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram. The show has a YouTube Channel, largely for Audiogram advertisements.          Music, writing, narration, mixing normally all yours truly. This week I borrowed the melody for Waltzing Matilda (words the poet Banjo Patterson - click here to check out his most famous work The Man From Snowy River… music to his poem by Christina McPherson) For more information on Simone click here.