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Daily Record
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Record
Blood of My Blood series 1 screening schedule in full with one week break
The first episode of the Outlander spin off airs tomorrow on Starz. The wait is almost over until the Outlander prequel Blood of My Blood kicks off and fans cannot contain their excitement. Friday, August 8 is the day that the highly anticipated show airs on Starz which follows two new love stories, one which starts on the battlefields of the Western Front during World War I and the other in the meadows of Scotland in the early 18th century. It will unravel the tale of both Jamie and Claire Fraser's parents. Jamie's dad, Brian Fraser, died just mere days after the Highland warrior's second flogging from Randall in Outlander. Although we are yet to get a taste of the spin-off, some critics have shared their glowing reviews ahead of its release. The rest of the prequel follows the romance between Henry Beauchamp (Jeremy Irvine) and Julia Moriston (Hermione Corfield), who are Claire's parents. And now the full screening schedule has been revealed. The first and second episode will air on Saturday, August 9, at 2am and then 3.20am. Episodes will then be episodic until October 4 when it will be a skip week between episodes 109 and 110. The final episode will air on October 11. Back in June, it was announced that Outlander: Blood Of My Blood would be filming a second season, before the first season even aired a single episode. In a statement, Blood of My Blood's showrunner and executive producer Matthew B. Roberts said: "The passion and talent our cast and crew have poured into Outlander: Blood of my Blood has been extraordinary and we're thrilled to continue these epic love stories in season two." "Just as audiences fell in love with Jamie and Claire, we hope viewers will be enamoured by these new couples when they meet them this summer," he continued. And fans will be delighted to know that filming for season two has already kicked off in the exact same location Outlander was filmed over the last decade. Followers were quick to share their excitement in the comments of the official post, with one writing: "What amazing news! I'm already counting down to BOMB's premiere - and Season 2 is already underway?! So exciting!" As another jokingly stated: "Season 1 isn't even out yet but season 2 is already starting. Oh yeah, I've got a good feeling about the trauma to come." While a third voice their congratulations, saying: "OMG!!! I'm not even surprised because we know this show is going to be that GOOD. Congrats to everyone," alongside fire and clapping emojis.
Daily Record
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Record
Outlander Blood of My Blood gets top ratings on Rotten Tomatoes ahead of release
Critics took to Rotten Tomatoes to say the Starz spin-off show 'maintains the magic' of the original Since its debut more than a decade ago, Outlander has amassed a global fanbase. The historical romance series, centring round Claire Randall/Fraser (Caitríona Balfe) and Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan), saw their love affair quickly capture hearts. However with the show nearing its end with the eighth and final season set for 2026, the phenomenon is expanding in the form of a spin-off to Diana Gabaldon's treasured franchise. Blood of My Blood is set to air to audiences later this week, August 8. The series will follow two new love stories, one which starts on the battlefields of the Western Front during World War I and the other in the meadows of Scotland in the early 18th century. It will unravel the tale of both Jamie and Claire Fraser's parents. Jamie's dad, Brian Fraser, died just mere days after the Highland warrior's second flogging from Randall in Outlander. Although we are yet to get a taste of the spin-off, some critics have shared their glowing reviews ahead of its release. Taking to Rotten Tomatoes, one confirmed that the 'magic' of Outlander is also apparent in the spin-off. "Outlander: Blood of My Blood unquestionably maintains the magic of the original show, a steamy, emotional, addictively watchable prequel that succeeds at everything fans have loved from the beginning," one person wrote. Another critic noted: "Lush, complex, beautifully shot and structured, this prequel is a thrilling addition to a franchise that has enraptured audiences from the beginning." A third said: "Outlander: Blood of My Blood is more than a prequel; it's a necessary story to tell both for the world and because of its themes." "Who could turn down another serving of such a decadent treat, especially when made with such obvious love for the original? It's clear that 'Blood of My Blood' is certainly reveling in its ability to deliver Outlander fan service," another critic remarked. One simply wrote: "Starz's Outlander saga had seduced me fully once again". One section of the series follows the love story between Ellen MacKenzie (Harriet Slater) and Brian Fraser (Jamie Roy), who are Jamie's parents. The rest of the prequel follows the romance between Henry Beauchamp (Jeremy Irvine) and Julia Moriston (Hermione Corfield), who are Claire's parents. Featuring as a stand-alone series, any fans dreading the impending forever Droughtlander should be sure not to miss this one. "The series will centre on these two parallel love stories set in two different eras, with Jamie's parents in the early 18th-century Scottish Highlands and Claire's parents in WWI England," according to the official synopsis. Matthew B. Roberts, the showrunner of Outlander, will also serve as the showrunner and executive producer on the spin-off series. The first season will compose of 10 episodes. Maril Davis and Ronald D. Moore will also join as executive producers, with Outlander author Diana Gabaldon acting as a consulting producer.
BBC News
30-07-2025
- General
- BBC News
World War One pillboxes in Norfolk listed by Historic England
A rare semi-circular bunker-like structure is among eight World War One pillboxes in Norfolk that have been granted Grade II listed concrete buildings were built in Norfolk between 1916 and 1918, designed to protect a stretch of English coast from a potential German sea invasion, including the semi-circular one at Bacton still have their original steel doors, gun loop shutters and white-painted interiors, according to Historic East of England regional director Tony Calladine said they were "a reminder of a time when determined communities prepared to defend Britain during the Great War". Listed buildings are buildings of special architectural or historic interest with legal but one of the newly-listed pillboxes are in the North Walsham area and they are: Two defending the Common Road and Bradfield Beck crossing point at Bradfield CommonA rare semi-circular pillbox at Bacton Wood, guarding a canal bridgeTwo circular pillboxes at White Horse Common at the Edbridge Mill crossingTwo either side of Bacton Road, Little London, defending the canal bridgeThe final pillbox is another circular one at Wayford Bridge, near pillboxes were positioned along the River Ant and the North Walsham & Dilham Canal - waterways that could provided further defence in The Broads. They are all slightly inland and were part of a network of pillboxes which were designed to "provide a barrier to invading enemy troops", said Mr Calladine. Pillboxes were generally camouflaged against the landscape to hide the occupants from enemy were installed with small holes in the walls called loopholes where weapons could be fired first pillboxes were built by the German army on the Western Front, but as the threat of invasion increased in Britain, they began appearing along the east coast of."The listing of these pillboxes recognises their historic significance and exceptional durability," Mr Calladine added. Historic England hopes people will add their photographs and drawings of the pillboxes and share their stories to its Missing Pieces Project. Follow Norfolk news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
India Today
17-06-2025
- Health
- India Today
The facemaker of World War 1: how Harold Gillies gave shattered soldiers a new self
Today, when we hear the words 'plastic surgery,' it often conjures images of celebrities fine-tuning their looks under bright Hollywood lights. But long before it was about aesthetic tweaks, it was about survival -- about restoring identity to those whose faces had been taken by war or fire or trenches of the First World War unleashed a kind of devastation few could have imagined. Men returned to Britain with their jaws blown off, noses missing, eyes sealed shut -- shells of their former at Cambridge Military Hospital in Aldershot, England, a young surgeon from New Zealand saw something others didn't. He looked beyond the torn skin and shattered bones and asked a different kind of question: what if surgery could bring not just flesh, but identity, back to life?FROM DUNEDIN DREAMER TO SURGICAL PIONEEROn June 17, 1882, Harold Delf Gillies was born into a world of rhetoric and renaissance. His father was a Member of Parliament in Dunedin, NewZealand, and his mother was related to the whimsical poet Edward Whanganui Collegiate, young Gillies excelled in medicine, but also cricket and golf. Those qualities would shape his later life: physical precision mixed with a creative England, he read medicine at Cambridge's Gonville and Caius, where he rowed in the 1904 Boat Race and played golf for England. Then came London and Hospital, where he trained in 1911, he'd married Kathleen Margaret Jackson, and shortly after, World War I broke out. Group photo at Queen Mary's Hospital in Sidcup in 1917, including Harold Gillies, William Kelsey Fry and Henry Tonks (1917) (Photo: Wikimedia Commons) A WAR SCULPTED A NEW VISIONHe arrived on the Western Front in 1915, a 32-year-old doctor with tools, questions, and a quiet kind of French surgeon Hippolyte Morestin, Harold Gillies watched as damaged jaws were covered using pieces of skin from other parts of the body. The sight moved him in London, he convinced the military to let him create a special ward at Aldershot, dedicated entirely to soldiers with facial he was bringing wounded men from the front lines to England -- not just to fix their wounds, but to help them rebuild their sense of first ward would grow. By 1917, the Queen's Hospital (later renamed Queen Mary's Hospital) opened in Sidcup, England, a place where medicine met Gillies assembled a team of surgeons, dentists, anaesthetists, and artists -- all working in harmony to develop new ways of healing. They used skin grafts layered like building blocks, and carefully shaped pieces of tissue to rebuild faces feature by SURGERY, REBUILDING FACESadvertisementThe most famous of Gillies' breakthroughs was something that, on paper, sounded bizarre: the 'tubed pedicle flap.'In an era before antibiotics, open wounds were a dangerous gamble. So Gillies came up with a solution -- shaping skin into tubes while keeping one end attached to the body, so it stayed living skin was slowly moved, bit by bit, across the face until it reached the damaged area. It looked strange, but it 8,000 soldiers were treated using this method at Sidcup. For many, it gave them something beyond survival -- it gave them their face back. Walter Yeo, the first person to receive plastic surgery, before (left) and after (right) skin flap surgery performed by Sir Harold Delf Gillies in 1917. The pictures of Walter's face before the surgery are blurry and hard to come by. In the tragic accident he was recorded as having lost both his upper and lower eyelids. The surgery was some of the first to use a skin flap from an unaffected area of the body and paved the way for a sudden rash of improvements in this field. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons) advertisementGillies planned every operation with care. He drew sketches on envelopes and scrap paper, built wax masks and plaster moulds to imagine how a face could be put back together.'Use your eyes first, dirty fingers later,' he would say. His surgery wasn't just skill -- it was craft.A CUP OF COLOUR AND A STREAK OF HUMOURHe wasn't always serious. Gillies liked mischief as much as medicine. He often lit up a Cuban cigar while testing colours in his spectrometer, a tool used for analysing chemical elements, claiming it helped him check lithium lines. It probably also amused the operating theatre, Gillies was a champion golfer, earning his Blue at Cambridge and competing in national tournaments -- even tweaking surgical tools to suit his golfer's grip. He was widely regarded in the early 1920s as one of the finest amateur golfers in England. Harold Gillies was one of the best amateur golfers in England (Photo: Wikimedia Commons) advertisementAnd then there was 'Dr Scroggie from South Africa' -- a persona he created for fun. Dressed in a fake beard and wig, Gillies once walked into his own home pretending to be a visiting doctor. He even fooled his colleagues roared with laughter when they realised the trick -- it was the kind of prank that became legend in his personal life had its own chapters. He married Kathleen Jackson and had children, but lost her in 1957. Later that year, he married Marjorie Clayton, his assistant and close companion for lived for people, progress, and humour -- sometimes all in one operating WAR: A NEW ERA IN SURGERYAfter 1918, Gillies sowed his seeds in civilian soil. His book Plastic Surgery of the Face (1920) became the cornerstone of modern surgery. He founded units around the world, training others like Archibald McIndoe and Rainsford in WWII, his influence helped build effective plastic surgery teams. In 1946 he performed one of the first female-to-male affirming surgeries (MichaelDillon) and in 1951 worked with gender pioneering RobertaCowell. Dr. Gillis, who operated on the Danish sailors injured in the geyser explosion (2nd from the left) (Photo: Wikimedia Commons) When asked why, he replied simply: 'If it gives real happiness, that is the most any medicine can give.'A DOCTOR'S LAST ACTGillies worked nearly to the end. He died on September 10, 1960, days after a stroke, still amid a life of purpose and left no fortune, but his real legacy lives on in faces once surgery may now conjure cosmetic bowls on screens. But Gillies reminded the world it was always about function, dignity, reclaiming used art to heal a person's soul as well as their skin. He proved science can be creative. And he offered hope where despair once reigned.
Otago Daily Times
31-05-2025
- Sport
- Otago Daily Times
Statue to honour local war hero
An Oamaru war hero killed at the Battle of the Somme may finally take pride and place in his hometown. The New Zealand Remembrance Army (NZRA) plan to honour Victoria Cross recipient, Sergeant Donald Forrester Brown with a life-size bronze statue. Sgt Brown was the first VC recipient for heroism on the Western Front, and the only man from North Otago to be honoured out of 23 New Zealand VC medal winners. New Zealand Remembrance Army member Barry Gamble, who initiated the project, said the plan to build a statute of Sgt Brown was to pay tribute to a local and national hero. "It's all about recognition, honouring this man, who is a true blue Kiwi farmer, who spent most of his short life working the land and then bravely fought for his country." On the opening day of New Zealand's Somme campaign in France, on September 15, 1916, Brown charged and captured key enemy machine-gun positions, helping New Zealand forces to push through German lines. During another attack two weeks later, on the Somme front, Brown told his men to take cover and took two trenches on by himself, chasing the enemy down before he was killed by machine-gun fire at the age of 26, Mr Gamble said. The 1916 Somme offensive was one of the largest and bloodiest battles of the First World War (1914-18). The posthumous VC award for gallantry was presented to his father, Robert Brown in Oamaru by the Governor-General, Lord Liverpool in 1917. Mr Gamble said the statue would provide educational, cultural and commemorative value to the Oamaru community and visitors and preserve Sgt Brown's legacy for generations to come. "All the other towns have honoured their Victoria Cross winners with statues and paintings, why not Oamaru ... it's something that we can be really proud of." A former student of Waitaki Boys' High School and a Totara farmer, Sgt Brown was born in 1890 in Dunedin and moved to Oamaru with his family in the mid 1890s, where his father set up a successful drapery business and department store which was eventually named the Polytechnic. Making early sacrifices to enlist with the army, Brown sold his farm on Waiareka Rd in Totara, and gave away his dog, and his horse "and away he went", Mr Gamble said. Your Loving Son, Don, a book of letters he wrote home to his father from the war, was published in 1998 by Sgt Brown's niece Eunice P. Brown. In April, 1916 while stationed in Egypt he wrote about the comfort of his fellow soldiers from the Otago Infantry Regiment in the 10th North Otago Company and their plan to return home. "Its just great the number of Oamaru boys one finds here, and one and all are certain, old Oamaru is quite good enough for us in future." Mr Gamble said despite a photo of Sgt Brown in the Waitaki District Council chambers and his name on the honours board at Waitaki Boys' High School he had "largely been forgotten by Oamaru". "It's quite sad because we've got a proud heritage of buildings, and we've got some of the best memorial statues in the country, like the Hall of Memories." Mr Gamble has driven many projects to honour soldiers, including helping to restore the graves of former military personnel in the Waitaki district. He is also the Oamaru RSA local support adviser. The costing for the monument would be about $160,000, he said. Bob Brown, of Rakaia, the great-nephew of the war hero, was thrilled to be involved and donated $10,000 towards the project, Mr Gamble said. "They were really, really stoked that someone was wanting to do this and they're right behind me." Former New Zealand Army artist Matt Gauldie will be commissioned to create the statue. Gauldie produced a miniature paying close attention to details, at $2000 for the purposes of fundraising. "He's very clever ... a lot of work has gone into this to make sure that he's got all the right war equipment on," Mr Gamble said. NZRA put $1500 towards the concept plan and the Waitaki District Council are in support of the project, he said. Mr Gamble said they estimated the project would take a year and a half to complete and he will be seeking donations from the public and organisations. A final site for the public statue is yet to be determined. The Victoria Cross is the highest award in the British decorations system and is awarded for valour "in the presence of the enemy" to members of the British and Commonwealth armed services.
