In 2020 I was commissioned to write the Foreword to Kicking Sawdust, a book of late 20th Century US circus photography by Clayton Anderson. Alongside Clayton’s evocative images, the book also contains some fascinating interview material with circus historian Dominique Jando. While I can’t reproduce that here, my own contribution is supplied below in the original draft format (complete with a couple of footnotes, which sadly the final publication didn’t replicate).