Doctor Dolittle's Circus

The doctor needs money to pay off a voyage to Africa, so he joins the circus with the pushmi-pullyu as his attraction. He enlightens a circus owner who cares little for animals, fights against the practice of fox hunting and helps other creatures such as a circus seal and cart horses too old to work. Hugh John Lofting was a trained as a civil engineer and author who created the character of Doctor Dolittle; one of the classics of children’s literature. Hugh Lofting’s doctor from Puddleby-on-the-Marsh who could speak to animals first saw light in the author’s illustrated letters to children, written from the trenches during World War I when actual news, he later said, was either too horrible or too dull. Eight more books followed, and after Lofting’s death two more volumes, composed of short unpublished pieces, appeared. The series has been adapted for film and television many times, for stage twice, and for radio.