Podcaster in Residence - Episode 7 - The Natural History of Cage Birds - Adrian Duncan

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 author of five novels and a work of non-fiction. His debut, Love Notes from a German Building Site, won the John McGahern Book Prize in 2019. His second novel, A Sabbatical in Leipzig, was shortlisted for the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award in 2020. His short story collection, Midfield Dynamo (2021), was longlisted for the Edge Hill Prize. His third novel, The Geometer Lobachevsky, was shortlisted for both the Walter Scott Prize and the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award. His fourth novel, The Gorgeous Inertia of the Earth, was published in January 2025 by Tuskar Rock Press. His fifth, A Thought without Collision, is due out later this year. His first non-fiction book, Little Republics: The Story of Bungalow Bliss, explores rural Irish domestic architecture from the 1970s to the 1990s. He is also editor of PVA journal - its latest edition focuses on Monuments.