Latest news with #WWII
Daily Record
4 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Record
Blood of My Blood trailer's key detail hints at Outlander crossover
Fans of the Outlander prequel series may not have spotted this moment Outlander: Blood of My Blood premiered last week and already has a legion of fans who are falling in love with the new Starz drama series. The third instalment will be hitting screens at the end of this week, before then fans are already speculating where the story could go given the series isn't based on any books unlike parent series Outlander. The first two episodes followed Henry Beauchamp (played by Jeremy Irvine) and Julia Moriston's (Hermione Corfield) epic wartime romance over letters, before their fateful trip to Inverness when they were transported back to the 18th century at Craigh na Dun. Henry and Julia were cruelly separated after she fell through time first, with her husband following swiftly in her footsteps. Henry is now desperately trying to find Julia, who doesn't realise her husband also time-travelled. Although it looks like Henry and Julia are in stuck in the past with no means to return to their time, the Outlander: Blood of My Blood trailer appears to feature an intriguing time travel clue that fans may have missed. The trailer shows Henry running along a footpath, appearing to be elated. In the background, a woman wearing 20th century attire rides on a bicycle, but one detail fans may have missed is a war monument with 1939 to 1945 engraved in the stone behind him. This suggests that Henry will be going back through the stones in the belief that he will meet Julia again. But it looks like Henry has gone too far into the future, as WWII has already happened by this point. If anything, this suggests Henry made it back, but Julia may still be stuck in the past. Henry's location is also unknown, but he could still be in Inverness, which suggests the possibility of an Outlander and Blood of My Blood crossover. If Henry has travelled back to the future, he may have ended up meeting the adult version of his daughter Claire Fraser (Caitríona Balfe), perhaps without recognising her. Alternatively, depending on exactly when Henry ends up, Claire might already be lost in time as she first went through the stones in 1946. There is also the possibility that Henry may stumble across Frank Randall (Tobias Menzies) as he tries to find Claire and even the likes of Reverend Wakefield (James Fleet), who previously assisted the Oxford historian in his search for his missing wife. Given that Blood of My Blood has no source material when it comes to Claire's parents, fans will have to wait and see how this storyline plays out and if it feeds into the second season of the show, which is currently in production. Outlander season 8 will air on Starz and MGM+ via Prime Video in early 2026
BBC News
7 hours ago
- General
- BBC News
VJ Day: WW2 signed flag is 'a piece of history'
The son of a Royal Navy officer who was imprisoned in a Japanese prisoner of war camp has described a flag signed by his father as a "piece of history".Richard Wood from Fordingbridge, Hampshire, spotted his father's name, also Richard, on the union flag when it was featured in a recent BBC TV news had served on HMS Exeter, which was sunk in the Java Sea, before being imprisoned by the Japanese in National Museum of the Royal Navy in Portsmouth allowed Mr Wood access to see the flag and is looking to trace family members of other men who signed it. The flag was in an airdrop of food supplies to those in Makassar Prisoner of War Camp in Indonesia by the Australian air force in September 1945 after the Japanese had contained British, American and Dutch servicemen. A large contingent were from the Plymouth-based HMS Exeter, as well as HMS Encounter and the USS Pope, which had all been sunk during the Battle of the Java Sea in March Wood said his father had never mentioned the flag."He very rarely spoke about anything of his time, which was a shame - but I understand they were told not to," he spotted his father's writing on the flag when it was featured on a BBC South Today report about objects held at the museum, and was invited to see it."It's a real piece of history and its a real privilege to see it - knowing he signed in as he knew the war was almost Wood Snr stayed in the Royal Navy until he retired in 1968, having reached the rank of lieutenant commander. He died in 2007, aged 93. Prisoners in the camp suffered dreadful conditions during their three years in captivity. They endured frequent beating, while Malaria and other diseases were Heppa, the museum's curator of artefacts, said the flag had been dropped as way of telling the prisoners, they "hadn't been forgotten".The museum is hoping to put the flag on public display and is appealing for information about other men who signed it."If we can collect as much supporting information about the individuals named on the flag, that would be wonderful," he added. You can follow BBC Hampshire & Isle of Wight on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.
Daily Mail
11 hours ago
- General
- Daily Mail
CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews Antiques Roadshow: VJ Day Special on BBC1: Poignant keepsakes of the Forgotten Army brought a lump to the throat...
Antiques Roadshow: VJ Day Special (BBC1) Rating: The words are inscribed on war memorials across the country: 'When you go home, tell them of us and say, For your tomorrow, we gave our today.' But few, perhaps, know the words are sometimes called the Kohima Prayer, named after a battle in a remote part of India in 1944, a turning point in the war against Japan. Unlike Alamein or Arnhem, Kohima is not frequently remembered. Sadly, the courage and the sacrifice of the British and Commonwealth soldiers who defended it, the 14th Army, are often overlooked too. No wonder they sometimes called themselves, with dry irony, the Forgotten Fourteenth. But their story was marked with a mixture of solemnity and sentimentality as some of their descendants brought treasured keepsakes of the war in the Far East to the Antiques Roadshow: VJ Day Special. 'It's history in your hand,' remarked historian Robert Tilney, as he inspected a Japanese officer's shin gunto sword, a trophy from Kohima. 'It's a hairs-on-the-back-of-your-neck job.' This episode traced the conflict chronologically, from Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima. JUGGLING ACT OF THE WEEKEND A dolphin mother taught her calf how to play keepy-uppy with a piece of coral balanced on her nose, in Parenthood (BBC1). The trick was to drop it and catch it again before it hit the seabed. No using teeth or flippers... that's cheating. The names are familiar but the horrors suffered by troops in the jungles of South-east Asia are beyond imagination, as viewers of The Narrow Road To The Deep North (which followed on BBC1) can attest. Children and grandchildren of the survivors all repeated versions of the same line: 'He never talked about it much.' In part, as presenter Fiona Bruce discovered, this was because soldiers who returned from the murderous Japanese prisoner-of-war camps were under orders not to discuss what they had endured. I've always felt there was another, subtler psychological reason: these men had been through hell to protect their families. By making light of what they suffered, they were able to continue giving that protection. There was no doubting the debt of gratitude, coupled with a deep sense of respect, that everyone on the show felt. None of the artefacts was given a valuation — that would have been crass. In any case, how can you put a price on a bowl fashioned from a coconut shell, which was one man's only possession during his long imprisonment? There was no doubting the debt of gratitude, coupled with a deep sense of respect, that everyone on the show felt. None of the artefacts was given a valuation — that would have been crass Many of the items were impossibly poignant, such as a chess set carved from balsa wood with a penknife, or the hat worn by a soldier with the Chindits, an explosives expert fighting deep behind enemy lines. Possibly the most touching of all was a letter from an artillery man to his baby son, and preserved with care for more than 80 years. 'Dear little Jimmy,' he wrote, 'though you won't be able to read this, I hope you'll keep it and cherish it. Be very good for mummy as she's the dearest person in the world and love her just as much as I do.' Jimmy had a lump in his throat as he read it. And so did I.
Times
11 hours ago
- Times
The secret story of my grandpa's life as a prisoner of war in Japan
L ast year, while looking through my grandfather Joe Hazel's papers, which our mother had given to the Imperial War Museum, we discovered a small black notebook. It was written in a prisoner of war camp more than 80 years ago but its contents read more like a holiday brochure than a diary of the deprivations and cruelties that PoWs had suffered at the hands of their Japanese captors during the Second World War. Each page listed holiday trips, with tips on places to stay, things to do and how to get there. 'Glenbeigh Hotel — Shore of Dingle Bay, about 1 mile from sea, a lovely strand,' read one entry, in Joe's neat handwriting. 'Good holiday for children but go in summer months to avoid rain.'
Wall Street Journal
19 hours ago
- Politics
- Wall Street Journal
‘Marseille 1940' Review: Port of Exit
The author of 'Marseille 1940' suggests by his title that we focus on a specific place and time. The events that unfold in his book occur mainly from May to July 1940 in Marseille, the second-most populous city in France. It was then the largest port on the European Mediterranean and a short trip to North Africa and Spain, destination points for all those, both French and others, fleeing Europe. During a brief period, this coastal metropolis was the most important port in Nazi-occupied Europe. The Wehrmacht invaded France in May 1940 and within a month had defeated the Continent's largest and most admired army. The rest of Europe was stunned, and all anticipated that the United Kingdom would be the next victim of this ferocious dictatorship. The U.S. was especially anxious, for it had believed that France and the U.K. would keep the Atlantic safe from the German navy. The German invasion had succeeded so quickly and definitively against the French army that thousands upon thousands of French citizens, along with refugees from a dozen other nations threatened by Adolf Hitler, sought immediate safety in Marseille. Uwe Wittstock, a German journalist, has done extensive research in the latest available archives and explains in his book how chaos replaced order in what had previously been a confident nation. The Germans soon realized that they could not occupy all of France bureaucratically and militarily, so they established a collaborationist government, with Marshal Philippe Pétain, the famed hero of the Great War, as its leader. Pétain was allowed a small armed force to police resisters, mostly communists, who had immediately formed in response to the Nazi occupation. It had taken the Vichy police and the Gestapo weeks to control the port, and many saw Marseille as their last option for escape. Mr. Wittstock's book, ably translated by Daniel Bowles, is replete with examples of those persons—both domestic and foreign—who felt they had to flee France in 1940 or else be arrested by the Gestapo. Paris proper had a population of two million; about half that number had already fled. These included Jews and others who believed they might be targets of German oppression. Many of the latter eventually returned to their homes but, for the first few months after the invasion, the bombed railroads and major thoroughfares prevented Paris from being repopulated.
