Speaker 1: Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener Discretion advised, Hi,
Speaker 1: welcome to a very special episode of Noble Blood. I
Speaker 1: am so excited to be joined here by Dr Lindsay
Speaker 1: fitz Harris, the amazing historian. She actually wrote a book
Speaker 1: called The Butchering Art about the Scottish surgeon Robert Lister,
Speaker 1: which was a huge help for me as I was
Speaker 1: researching and writing my novel Anatomy, a love Story. But
Speaker 1: she's written a new book, The Face Maker, a visionary
Speaker 1: surgeon's battle to men the disfigured soldiers of World War One,
Speaker 1: all about sort of, I would say, the unsung hero
Speaker 1: of plastic surgery, Harold Jillies, who just I mean from
Speaker 1: this book, I knew nothing about him. He's an incredible man. Lindsay, Hi, welcome.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me on. I'm really
Speaker 1: excited to talk to you about this, as you say,
Speaker 1: really kind of unknown story about the grandfather of plastic surgery.
Speaker 1: So let's sort of back up a bit. How did
Speaker 1: you come to this story? I asked myself about many times,
Speaker 1: and it took five years to research and right so
Speaker 1: with the Butchering Art, which was about Victorian surgery and
Speaker 1: all the horrible things we used to do before anesthesia
Speaker 1: and germ theory. Um, you don't have to navigate complications
Speaker 1: like patient confidentiality, which you do in the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: And I wasn't really prepared to take that on. What
Speaker 1: it happened was I have a PhD in the history
Speaker 1: of science and medicine from Oxford, but I call myself
Speaker 1: a storyteller these days. And I didn't know much about
Speaker 1: Harrow Gillies or World War One in fact, but I
Speaker 1: knew that there was a really harrowing story there, and
Speaker 1: I knew that when I started the book, I wanted
Speaker 1: to drop the reader right in the middle of the
Speaker 1: battle to see what that felt like and smelt like,
Speaker 1: and what was it like to be in those trenches.
Speaker 1: You know, they used to say that you could smell
Speaker 1: the front before you could even see it, So I
Speaker 1: really wanted to build that vivid picture for readers. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, there's a early on. I feel like the
Speaker 1: first thing I circled was you talked about like a
Speaker 1: bubbling mass of worms coming out of someone's wound. It's
Speaker 1: just so and it's horrible, you know. And I don't
Speaker 1: pull punches. I don't do it in the butchering art.
Speaker 1: But it's not because I relish the gore and the violence.
Speaker 1: It's because I feel like I wouldn't be doing these
Speaker 1: patients any justice if I wasn't explaining exactly what that
Speaker 1: was like for them. And so Private Percy Claire who's
Speaker 1: hit in the face at the beginning of the book,
Speaker 1: he writes this amazing diary about his experiences, which is
Speaker 1: why I used him, and he talks about how this
Speaker 1: bullet went right through his face and he laid on
Speaker 1: the battlefield and he thought he was going to die,
Speaker 1: and it was a real struggle just to get the
Speaker 1: stretcher bearers to take him off that field because they
Speaker 1: also thought he was going to die. It's that horrible
Speaker 1: thing where they have to protect the people they think
Speaker 1: of the best chance of survival. Yeah, and you know,
Speaker 1: a face is very vascular, so anybody who's had a
Speaker 1: face wounded leads a lot, even a minor cut. You know,
Speaker 1: there are photos in the Face Maker, and I didn't
Speaker 1: include those lightly. I actually consulted with a disability activist
Speaker 1: over this. I didn't want it to be medical voyeurism.
Speaker 1: But I also think it's important that we look at
Speaker 1: these men's faces because during are in the war, they
Speaker 1: were often forced to sit on blue benches so that
Speaker 1: the public knew not to look at them. It was
Speaker 1: very isolating experience for them. So I think that we
Speaker 1: need to look at them today and we need to
Speaker 1: not put them on that metaphorical blue bench. I thought
Speaker 1: that was a brilliant note that you wrote in the
Speaker 1: beginning of the beginning of the book explaining your decision
Speaker 1: to show the photographs. And yes, some of them are
Speaker 1: hard to look at, but I think they also go
Speaker 1: to show how amazing Dr Jilli's work was. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's Gillies with Okay, I had asked you before,
Speaker 1: like right before this podcast started, but I will give
Speaker 1: the excuse that it's said and I am and left.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's somebody. I mean. Also, if you've read it,
Speaker 1: Jilly's in your head, because there was. My friend Karen
Speaker 1: Abbott also kept making that mistake when I was in
Speaker 1: New York, and I was like, once it's in your head,
Speaker 1: it's hard to kind of erase it. But yeah, it
Speaker 1: is Gillies. But yeah, the work he could do before
Speaker 1: antibiotics over a hundred years ago, with no textbooks to
Speaker 1: guide him to rebuild these faces as extraordinary. Plastic surgery
Speaker 1: did pre date the first for war. In fact, the
Speaker 1: term is coined in se At that time, plastic meant
Speaker 1: something that you could shape or you could mold, so
Speaker 1: in this case a patient skin or soft tissue. Really,
Speaker 1: those early attempts focused on very small areas of the face,
Speaker 1: such as the ears and the nose. What Gillies is
Speaker 1: able to do is it goes much further beyond restructuring
Speaker 1: entire faces that have been obliterated by war. So backing
Speaker 1: up to sort of your story, you're an American who
Speaker 1: then studied and got her PhD at Oxford. What was
Speaker 1: that journey like for you? What was that decision like?
Speaker 1: And then how did you come to medical history specifically?
Speaker 1: So we both are from Illinois, your Park and I'm
Speaker 1: from Arlington Heights. Oh my god, we're literally neighbors. We're
Speaker 1: literally neighbors. And I can't get rid of this Chicago accident.
Speaker 1: I've been in the UK now for twenty years. It's
Speaker 1: it's here to stay, Oxford trying to beat it out
Speaker 1: of me. It's here to stay. I went to Oxford
Speaker 1: because they had a great program in medical history, which
Speaker 1: is a really niche subject, and I did my masters
Speaker 1: and my PhD. And then I got really burnt out intellectually.
Speaker 1: So I started a blog called the Surgeons of Apprentice,
Speaker 1: and I started to write for a general audience and
Speaker 1: I found that really rewarding. But what really happened that
Speaker 1: kind of was the catalyst into my career was my
Speaker 1: ex husband left me in very abruptly. He wrote me
Speaker 1: an email. I was in Chicago. This was a ten
Speaker 1: year relationship and the email an email. Yeah. So I
Speaker 1: returned to the UK. His stuff is gone, he's disappeared.
Speaker 1: He then reports me as illegally in the UK. He
Speaker 1: says that the marriage is over. She can't stay, so
Speaker 1: they take my passport. I can't work. So during that
Speaker 1: time I worked on a five page petition to remain
Speaker 1: in the UK. I had no money. I fought him
Speaker 1: in court and I ended up writing the proposal for
Speaker 1: the Butchering Art and selling it. And it changed my life.
Speaker 1: And you know, I say that that you know Joseph Lister,
Speaker 1: whom the books about, I say that he saved a
Speaker 1: lot of lives but he also saved mine because this
Speaker 1: book just lifted me out into a whole new career
Speaker 1: in situation. And I love engaging the public about medical history. Now,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I mean, that is an amazing story.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad for your sake, but also for all
Speaker 1: of our sakes that you're doing this work. What I
Speaker 1: think is so incredible about your writing is it's deep.
Speaker 1: I mean academic level history obviously, but at a level
Speaker 1: that anyone can read. It reads like a novel. It's fascinating.
Speaker 1: That are just amazing. I mean, I love Eric Larson's books,
Speaker 1: and I'm good friends with him. If anybody has read
Speaker 1: his books, narrative nonfiction is is what I love to do.
Speaker 1: It's it's as you say, it reads like a novel.
Speaker 1: It's all true. I think that even people who don't
Speaker 1: like history might like medical history because everybody knows what
Speaker 1: it's like to be sick, especially coming out of a pandemic.
Speaker 1: So you might not be interested in history and politics
Speaker 1: and work. You might know what it's like to be sick,
Speaker 1: and you might be able to relate to medical history.
Speaker 1: You know, what would happen if you had a toothache
Speaker 1: in seventeen two, or what would happen if you had
Speaker 1: to have a legra moved in eighteen forty three, And
Speaker 1: that's kind of where I come in as a medical historian.
Speaker 1: So obviously, as you alluded to, the situation with Robert
Speaker 1: Lister was very different than it is in nineteen seventeen,
Speaker 1: But were the obstacles of surgery at nineteen seventeen where
Speaker 1: sort of war away in technology and what did we
Speaker 1: still have to achieve? Well, so at the point of
Speaker 1: the First World War, surgeons understood germ theory, so that
Speaker 1: was at least good, but actually in a weird way
Speaker 1: that created problems because they had grown up on aseptic
Speaker 1: and antiseptic techniques, so they weren't used to identifying infections.
Speaker 1: So at the beginning of the war there is a
Speaker 1: high rate of infections. You can imagine the mud of
Speaker 1: the trenches and it's just very unhygienic, and these surgeons
Speaker 1: are quickly and hastily stitching these wounds up to stop
Speaker 1: the hemorrhagene, and in doing so they're literally sealing up
Speaker 1: these men's faith. They're stitching in this bacteria, So that
Speaker 1: does become a problem. Also, anesthesia hasn't really progressed since
Speaker 1: eighteen forty six when ether was first discovered, which I
Speaker 1: talked about in the Butchering Arb. And that was a
Speaker 1: wild time, by the way, guys, because when doctors discovered ether,
Speaker 1: they started drinking it and taking it themselves, and they
Speaker 1: had these ethereal experiences. That's where we get the term ethereal.
Speaker 1: So it's like the wild wild West of Edison. But
Speaker 1: nothing had really progressed since eighty With anesthesia, so you're
Speaker 1: talking about a rag with chloroform or a rudimentary mask,
Speaker 1: and in fact, Harold Gillies, at one point in the
Speaker 1: face maker is leaned over a patient and the patient
Speaker 1: is breathing ether back into Gilly's face. So this is
Speaker 1: a real problem for your facial reconstructive surgeon. So you
Speaker 1: have advances happening in anesthesia in parallel with plastic surgery
Speaker 1: for these very reasons, because putting a mask over a
Speaker 1: damaged face was problematic anyway, would obscure the area that
Speaker 1: Gillies needed to work on, but also it caused other
Speaker 1: kinds of issues in the operating theater. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: of course. So who was Harold Gillies? How did he
Speaker 1: come to be this pre eminent surgeon. So he was
Speaker 1: an E. N T surgeon before the war ear nose
Speaker 1: and throats, so he had a very good understanding of
Speaker 1: head anatomy. Well, what happens is he volunteers with the
Speaker 1: Red Cross. He ends up going to France and he
Speaker 1: meets this character named Charles Vladier. And anybody who's read
Speaker 1: The Butchering Art will know that I love telling the
Speaker 1: story about Robert Liston, who was the fastest knight in
Speaker 1: the West End. He could take your your leg off
Speaker 1: and under three seconds. Vladier is the Robert Liston of
Speaker 1: my story because he's bigger than life. He's an American
Speaker 1: French dentist. He has a Rolls Royce which he retrofits
Speaker 1: with a dental share and he literally drives it to
Speaker 1: the front under a hail of bullets. This guy is
Speaker 1: a legend. I mean, there's so many weird stories too,
Speaker 1: because people they were just throwing themselves into these dangerous situations.
Speaker 1: And it's Vladier who teaches Harold Gillies about one the
Speaker 1: importance of dentistry when rebuilding a face, and also just
Speaker 1: shows him this desperate need for facial reconstruction. Near the front.
Speaker 1: So that's really what sets it all off. You know,
Speaker 1: in the Butchering Art you talk a lot about sort
Speaker 1: of the distinction between barber surgeon of the early eighteen
Speaker 1: hundreds that transitioned into what we now consider surgery. Being
Speaker 1: a barber surgeon was not at like the same academic
Speaker 1: level as being a physician. Where sort of are we
Speaker 1: in that understanding in the early twentie entry. Yeah, I mean, so,
Speaker 1: as you say, in the earlier periods, so you're looking
Speaker 1: at like the seventeenth eighteen centuries, you had these people
Speaker 1: called barber surgeons, and they would pick the lights out
Speaker 1: of your hair, and they would pull teeth, and most
Speaker 1: people would see the barber surgeon rather than a physician,
Speaker 1: which was very expensive. Also, the barber surgeons would blood
Speaker 1: lat patients, and so that's where we get the red
Speaker 1: and white barber's pole, because they would advertise by putting
Speaker 1: these bloody rags on the pole, and it would twist
Speaker 1: in the wind and it would create that red and
Speaker 1: white pole that we're all familiar with. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: as I said, most and I have I have a
Speaker 1: barber's pole somewhere in this People can't hear me because
Speaker 1: we're on a podcast right now. But I have a
Speaker 1: lot of weird stuff in my office because I think
Speaker 1: that objects are a great way into the past. But
Speaker 1: the barber surgeons were sort of the first porter call
Speaker 1: for most people in that period. Surgeons in general were
Speaker 1: seen as people who worked with their hands, so it
Speaker 1: was seen as less than being a physician, which was
Speaker 1: someone who worked with their mind. So the physician rarely
Speaker 1: touched the patient or laid their hands on the patient.
Speaker 1: It was a much more cerebral activity. By the time
Speaker 1: World War One comes about, you know, surgeons are much
Speaker 1: more respected, thanks in part to Joseph Lister in his
Speaker 1: work in the nineteenth century and this kind of professionalization
Speaker 1: of surgeons at this time. So Gillies was, you know,
Speaker 1: at the top of his game as an E. N.
Speaker 1: T surgeon. He was working in a very lucrative practice
Speaker 1: in London. But when the war starts he finds his
Speaker 1: new passion, which is plastic surgery, which isn't a subspecialty
Speaker 1: of medicine at this point. And it's really after the
Speaker 1: war that it becomes quite tenuous because at that point
Speaker 1: he has to decide whether he's going to pursue plastic surgery,
Speaker 1: because again, at this point it wasn't really a specialty
Speaker 1: in medicine. Amazing. What I'm always curious when I bring
Speaker 1: on historians, what was your research process? Like? Obviously this
Speaker 1: book goes a multi year endeavor and it absolutely shows
Speaker 1: in the detail and depth of research, But where did
Speaker 1: you start? Well, my process is a lot of tears
Speaker 1: and going why did I take this on? I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that as a narrative nonfiction writer, a lot
Speaker 1: of my job is getting rid of material because I
Speaker 1: don't like to overwhelm readers. I don't know if anybody
Speaker 1: listening out there, you know, for me, I get turned
Speaker 1: off if I go into a bookstore and there's like
Speaker 1: this huge TomEE on John Adams, Like, I mean, that's
Speaker 1: too much of John Adams, right, So I like my
Speaker 1: books to be really fast paced. I want people who
Speaker 1: never thought about facial reconstruction or World War One to
Speaker 1: enjoy it and not feel swamped by the material. Now,
Speaker 1: when you're dealing with World War One, there is so
Speaker 1: much material. I mean it's literally there's so many letters
Speaker 1: and diaries. This is the time of war poetry. Everybody's
Speaker 1: writing about their experiences. So you can get very overwhelmed
Speaker 1: by it. I said at the beginning of the book
Speaker 1: that The Face Maker is not a definitive history of
Speaker 1: World War One. It's certainly not a definitive history of
Speaker 1: war medicine, and it's not even a definitive history of
Speaker 1: Harold Gillies. I really cherry picked a number of soldiers
Speaker 1: that really stood out to me, and so there's about
Speaker 1: twelve of them that are featured in the book, because again,
Speaker 1: I feel like it would just get not miss, that
Speaker 1: would get overwhelming. So a lot of what I do
Speaker 1: really is just absorbing material and then getting rid of
Speaker 1: it for everybody. So I I kind of a digest
Speaker 1: it for you so that you don't have to do
Speaker 1: all of that. That's sort of the noble blood ethost
Speaker 1: we try to condense. It's like the sweet spot is
Speaker 1: thirty minutes. If I can tell this the whole story
Speaker 1: in thirty minutes without getting bogged down in the extraneous details, no,
Speaker 1: we we don't. We don't have time. Who's got time
Speaker 1: for the big John Adams biography? You know, I certainly don't.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's an art to those long form biographies,
Speaker 1: But for me, again, like you know, I write in
Speaker 1: the style of Eric Larson, or hopefully people feel that way,
Speaker 1: and he writes such thrilling books. I mean, you forget
Speaker 1: that these are true stories. You know, he just wrote
Speaker 1: a book on Churchill, and you think, well, I know
Speaker 1: everything there is to know about Churchill. Yeah, he tells
Speaker 1: it in such a way that you forget in the moment.
Speaker 1: It feels very real and it feels like you're actually there,
Speaker 1: and that's what I hope I can achieve with my books.
Speaker 1: I mean, it does. I read this in like two days.
Speaker 1: It does read like a novel, like a story, especially
Speaker 1: because you focus on the individuals as characters. They feel
Speaker 1: like real people and sort of to that end, do
Speaker 1: you have a favorite case study that you went into
Speaker 1: in this book. No, it's a good question. There's a
Speaker 1: couple of men who are featured in the book. I mean,
Speaker 1: Percy Claire, as I said, opens it. But I think
Speaker 1: if there was a favorite, it's this guy named Private
Speaker 1: Walter Ashworth. Ashworth is injured on the first day of
Speaker 1: the Battle of the Song, which if you don't know
Speaker 1: anything about World War One, you probably recognized the Battle
Speaker 1: of the Song because it was a blood bath of
Speaker 1: the hundred thousand British soldiers who took place in the
Speaker 1: advance that day. Sixty thousand were killed or injured. Never
Speaker 1: before or since has a single army suffered such losses
Speaker 1: on a single day and a single battle, So it
Speaker 1: was horrible. Now Ashworth survives, but in doing so, a
Speaker 1: bullet rips through his face and removes part of his jaw.
Speaker 1: At that point he falls forwards, which is key to
Speaker 1: his survival, and he lays on the battlefield for three days.
Speaker 1: People are like, how could you lay on the battlefield
Speaker 1: for three days? First of all, he had no jaws,
Speaker 1: so he couldn't really scream for help. But the other
Speaker 1: aspect was that the structure bearers became targets themselves, so
Speaker 1: it took a lot to convince them that you were
Speaker 1: worthy of saving. It could take as many as twelve
Speaker 1: meant to remove a single man off the battlefield, so
Speaker 1: it's very laborious and dangerous. So Ashworth lays there for
Speaker 1: quite a long time. He's finally rescued. Now, as I said,
Speaker 1: key to his survival was falling forward, and that was
Speaker 1: because a lot of times these men fell backwards and
Speaker 1: they would choke on their own blood. Or they would
Speaker 1: choke on their tongues because their tongues would slip back
Speaker 1: into their throat, which was awful. So just getting off
Speaker 1: the battlefield was literally half the battle for these men.
Speaker 1: He ends up in Gilly's care his fiance breaks off
Speaker 1: their engagement. That was not uncommon for these men. But
Speaker 1: then later his fiance's friend gets word of this and
Speaker 1: she begins writing him at the hospital, and soon they
Speaker 1: fall in love and soon they get married. But one
Speaker 1: of the sad bits about his story is that when
Speaker 1: he's discharged from the British Army, he goes back to
Speaker 1: work as a tailor's assistant and his boss makes him
Speaker 1: work at the back of the shop because he doesn't
Speaker 1: want Ashworth to frighten the customers. And so I think
Speaker 1: one of the strongest themes in The Face Maker is
Speaker 1: that not all wounds during the First World War are
Speaker 1: inflicted on the battlefield. That's so heartbreaking when you think
Speaker 1: about the devastation that happened there, and then also that
Speaker 1: the devastation that came home. Yeah, and that's why I
Speaker 1: said Gillies didn't just mend these broken faces, he mended
Speaker 1: their broken spirits. But I think it's really important also
Speaker 1: to remember that Gillies is a product of facial biases
Speaker 1: of his day. I mean, arguably, we wouldn't need a
Speaker 1: Harold Gillies if we could have accepted these men's faces
Speaker 1: as they were. There was a need to restore function.
Speaker 1: Of course, you want to make sure that someone can
Speaker 1: swallow and to eat and to breathe. But Gillies was
Speaker 1: going far beyond this. I often say that this was
Speaker 1: a time when losing a limb made you a hero,
Speaker 1: but losing a face made you a monster to a
Speaker 1: society that was largely intolerant of facial differences. That's a
Speaker 1: great quote. I mean that that really sums it up.
Speaker 1: It's the movie. Yeah, it's the movie tagline. Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: out in l a. I'm We're always thinking about movie taglines,
Speaker 1: and you know how things can get adapted, and that's
Speaker 1: always the big dream as the writer. But all of
Speaker 1: that aside, I actually would love to see an adaptation
Speaker 1: because if you think about Hollywood, there's this really lazy
Speaker 1: trope about evilness within disfigurements. So yeah, oh my god,
Speaker 1: you have a Darth Vader, you have Baltimore, you have Blowfeld,
Speaker 1: you have Harvey Dent becomes evil after he becomes man like.
Speaker 1: He's fine until he is injured. So I would love
Speaker 1: to see an adaptation, if only because I'd love to
Speaker 1: see these disfigured men as the heroes of their own story,
Speaker 1: which they absolutely were at the time. Oh that's wonderful,
Speaker 1: you know. And another thing, I also read that Harold
Speaker 1: Gillies went on to sort of pioneer gender affirmation surgeries. Yes,
Speaker 1: this is amazing. So in the apologue I talk about
Speaker 1: his postwar career, and he does work through World War Two.
Speaker 1: He's actually working on genital reconstruction of sailors who are
Speaker 1: injured during that war. And his cousin works very famously
Speaker 1: on the burned pilots, and they become known in Britain
Speaker 1: as the Guinea Pig Club. In fact, I think there
Speaker 1: are still some guinea pigs still alive. It's it's like
Speaker 1: the world's most exclusive club. And they got a ton
Speaker 1: of media at the time for these burns and for
Speaker 1: the reconstructive process. In nine Harold Gillies performs the first
Speaker 1: successful falloplasty on a train ends man named Michael Dylan.
Speaker 1: This is an incredible story for so many reasons, not
Speaker 1: least it happened in nine. What happened was Dylan eventually
Speaker 1: was outed by the British press. It was terrible, there
Speaker 1: was a media circus. Dylan ended up fleeing Britain. But
Speaker 1: Harold Gillies really stood by him, and I think that
Speaker 1: really speaks to his progressiveness at the time, both as
Speaker 1: a surgeon and a human being. Absolutely, I mean being
Speaker 1: able to push the envelope in terms of just human dignity.
Speaker 1: It feels like he was like, yeah, did you really
Speaker 1: think that people should control their identities? Even in he
Speaker 1: moves into the cosmetic realm as well, because a lot
Speaker 1: of people asked, you know, what is plastic surgery? We
Speaker 1: come today, but if you think of plastic surgery is
Speaker 1: a heading and then underneath you have reconstructive and cosmetic,
Speaker 1: and both of those continued to be very important to
Speaker 1: the practice of plastic surgery. But Gillies himself, he moved
Speaker 1: into the cosmetic realm after the war, and he would
Speaker 1: say that, you know, reconstructive surgery was about returning something
Speaker 1: to quote normal, that was his word, but that the
Speaker 1: cosmetic realm was about surpassing the normal. And he was
Speaker 1: cited by both of those challenges wonderful, you know. And
Speaker 1: as we spoke a little bit before we started recording,
Speaker 1: Gillies actually has a living relative talking about how he
Speaker 1: got in contact with him. This is really funny. So
Speaker 1: the Butchering Art. If people have listened to the audiobook
Speaker 1: of the Butchering Art, it's read by a voice actor
Speaker 1: named Ralph Lister. This just happened to be coincident. He
Speaker 1: just happens to be related to Joseph Lister. In fact,
Speaker 1: when my publisher came to me with various actors, I said, wait,
Speaker 1: is Ralph Lister related to Joseph Lister? And they and
Speaker 1: they say, oh, yeah, he is. And I was like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: I don't even care what he sounds like. He's got
Speaker 1: to read it. That's just too weird. And he's like
Speaker 1: a real audiobook narrator. I'm looking aim up now he's done, like,
Speaker 1: you know, dozens of audio books. Yeah, it was just
Speaker 1: a total coincidence. It's not like, you know, I went
Speaker 1: and sought this guy out. So he did a great
Speaker 1: job with the Butchering Art. And then I found out
Speaker 1: that Harold Gillies has a very famous great great nephew
Speaker 1: named Daniel Gillies. He's been in The Vampire Diaries and
Speaker 1: various other television shows, and so I tweeted at him
Speaker 1: and I said, well, Daniel Gillies should read the Audible book,
Speaker 1: and he tweeted back and said, yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 1: So he's actually recorded it. It's been brilliant. I guess
Speaker 1: as he was recording it, he would stop and occasionally say, oh,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that about my ancestor. He of course
Speaker 1: knew a bit about Gillies, but you know, and his
Speaker 1: father wrote me too and said that this book is
Speaker 1: so wonderful because Harold Gillies was about to cease to
Speaker 1: exist in people's imaginations and now we can live again
Speaker 1: through the Facemaker. That's so sweet. I imagine if you're
Speaker 1: an actor and you get to read a book and
Speaker 1: know that this is like a direct ancestor of you,
Speaker 1: that's probably just such a weird. Yeah. I actually we'd
Speaker 1: love to do like a joint event at some time
Speaker 1: and talk about this because I just think it would
Speaker 1: be so because you know, Daniel Gillies being an actor
Speaker 1: in Hollywood, he is in the business of image, and
Speaker 1: so was Sir Harold Gillies. That makes time image is
Speaker 1: very important, so it would be interesting to kind of
Speaker 1: have a little chat with him about, you know, his
Speaker 1: process of learning about Gillies through this book. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it was just really a joy. And actually someone left
Speaker 1: a review of the audible book that said they thought
Speaker 1: that this was kind of a gimmick at first, but
Speaker 1: Daniel Gillies is so chapro and he did such a
Speaker 1: great job with the reading of it, so I think
Speaker 1: people listeners have been generally very happy with it. I
Speaker 1: also have to say I was like looking at his
Speaker 1: picture being like, where do I know this guy from?
Speaker 1: And he's in because I didn't watch the Vampire Diaries,
Speaker 1: so maybe I should. He's in Spider Man too, the
Speaker 1: like Sam Raimi one and he plays Mary Jane Watson's
Speaker 1: like perfect fiance. He's like a football quarterback astronaut with
Speaker 1: like oh my gosh. Oh he's had a beautiful face.
Speaker 1: He has the face that is a platonic ideal where
Speaker 1: you're like, I know and right, And I said, I said,
Speaker 1: what is the You know, it's ironic that Harold Gillies
Speaker 1: has this great great nephew who has this perfect masculine face.
Speaker 1: And as I dream up my adaptations and stuff. I
Speaker 1: used to think like, oh, he should play Harrold Gillis
Speaker 1: and that I was like, no, he should play one
Speaker 1: of the soldiers. His face is ruined and restored by
Speaker 1: Harrow Gillies and the man un rapid and it's like
Speaker 1: this beautiful face. But yeah, he's a very good looking man. Amazing.
Speaker 1: It's just just like, what a perfect coincidence that it
Speaker 1: all comes together. Yeah. Absolutely, So when you were, uh,
Speaker 1: in the metaphorical trenches of this sort of I don't
Speaker 1: want to say like grewsome research, but so much of
Speaker 1: World War One is so heavy and heartbreaking. What do
Speaker 1: you do to take care of yourself? But you're like
Speaker 1: a mental break well with the pandemic as you know
Speaker 1: out in l A. I mean, we were locked down
Speaker 1: and having this book during that time was also terrible
Speaker 1: on some level. But my new husband, who have been
Speaker 1: married to now for quite a few years, he's a
Speaker 1: caricaturist for a show over here called Spitting Image, and
Speaker 1: he's an illustrator, and so we're working on a children's
Speaker 1: book which we're still working out the title for that book,
Speaker 1: which will be out next year, and it's going to
Speaker 1: be an illustrated romp through medical history, all the kind
Speaker 1: of grossest diseases and what doctors tried to do. So
Speaker 1: that's been a nice creative relief. And then also I've
Speaker 1: now sold my third book, which is going to be
Speaker 1: called Sleuth Hound, and it's about Joseph Bell, who was
Speaker 1: the real life inspiration for Sherlock Holmes, was Conan Doyle's professor.
Speaker 1: It's going to be a romp through Victorian forensics. So
Speaker 1: I can't wait. I hope we can have a chat
Speaker 1: about that because I think it's going to really be
Speaker 1: in your wheelhouse. Oh my got I already love it.
Speaker 1: Please send me a copy. I get an advanced copy.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I'm excited about that one because it lets
Speaker 1: me go back to the nineteenth century. It feels like
Speaker 1: slipping into a comfortable, warm bath. I don't have to
Speaker 1: deal with patient confidentiality or anything like that. And it's
Speaker 1: going to be really fun looking at the various crime
Speaker 1: techniques in their early infancy at that time. The one
Speaker 1: thing I do have to say, sort of as like
Speaker 1: my self disclaimer, because this is noble blood and we
Speaker 1: usually find the noble connection. Harold Gillies was knighted. He
Speaker 1: was yes, absolutely, So he was knighted a little bit late,
Speaker 1: I would say, actually he should have received his knighthood
Speaker 1: bit earlier after the war, and there was a feeling
Speaker 1: amongst his colleagues that he had been sort of overlooked.
Speaker 1: But he did eventually received his knighthood and he was
Speaker 1: really pleased about it. And actually that's how I came
Speaker 1: up with the name the Face Maker, because it wasn't
Speaker 1: until I was working on the Apologue that I came
Speaker 1: across a letter to Gillies congratulating him on his knighthood,
Speaker 1: and it was addressed to dear face Maker. And I
Speaker 1: such a perfect title. I mean, you probably know the
Speaker 1: hell of titles and subtitles and all the things that
Speaker 1: go into kind of making a book successful. And with
Speaker 1: the Butchering Art, I sold it as the Butchering Art.
Speaker 1: It remained the Butchering Art, but the Face Maker. There
Speaker 1: were so many different titles. There was one that was
Speaker 1: war Torn, and we went through a lot of different iterations,
Speaker 1: but I think I finally nailed at the Face Maker.
Speaker 1: And the cover as well, which was designed by my
Speaker 1: husband Adrian Teal. It pays homage to Gilly's book The
Speaker 1: Principles and Art of Plastic Surgery, in which the cover
Speaker 1: pictures Gilly's hands holding the scalpel. So this cover is
Speaker 1: illustrated and it shows the hand of a surgeon, but
Speaker 1: in the blade you see the reflection of a bandaged soldier.
Speaker 1: So I like it because it gives the sense that
Speaker 1: this is a book not just about one man but
Speaker 1: about many men. Oh, that's so great. And then there's
Speaker 1: also another cover that the British cover that, yeah, so
Speaker 1: this one, So it's different publishers as you know, you know,
Speaker 1: different covers. Everybody asked me that the British and Penguin
Speaker 1: really nailed this, so I had like, really no notes
Speaker 1: on this one because again this is a podcast, so
Speaker 1: people can't picture it. But it's basically an illustrated cover
Speaker 1: and it's a silhouette of a Tommy from World War One.
Speaker 1: In his face is made up a composite of many
Speaker 1: different faces, and it's it's kind of disturbing, which I
Speaker 1: think is good. You know, I think, like, you know,
Speaker 1: people need to know that they're entering into this violent,
Speaker 1: graphic book. But I do think that there's redemption and
Speaker 1: there's hope. But you know, you've got to keep it real.
Speaker 1: It's the past, and I don't like to sugarcoat it
Speaker 1: for people. And I will also say that, like the
Speaker 1: fingers holding the scalpel on the cover are bloody, but
Speaker 1: it's like a cartoon blood. It's not like, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: totally you could read this book in public and no
Speaker 1: one's going to be Yeah. It has a bit of
Speaker 1: a like a you know, nineteen fifties the the US
Speaker 1: cover it has like a movie poster feel to its,
Speaker 1: kind of like it was so hard again my US.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you have ever had any cover
Speaker 1: issues where yeah, I'm nodding. Sorry again. Every every writer
Speaker 1: is like, oh, we've always had like that moment where
Speaker 1: the publishers goes, here's your cover and you're like, oh no,
Speaker 1: all right. Yeah. So the original iteration for the U
Speaker 1: s cover looked like a puzz a book like that
Speaker 1: you buy your grandmother, and it had Victorian font which
Speaker 1: was all wrong for this. So I really kind of
Speaker 1: took control and thankfully Adrian is an artist and he
Speaker 1: helped guide me through that. It helps to have very
Speaker 1: visual people, you know, circulating around you. So we finally
Speaker 1: nailed it. But it will be interesting to see what
Speaker 1: the foreign covers are, because it's going to be translated
Speaker 1: into about fifteen languages. So, oh my god, that's incredible. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for I mean, this book, for
Speaker 1: telling the story of Harold Giles in the world. Gillies,
Speaker 1: Jesus Gillies. Oh my god, don't worry. It's because I
Speaker 1: read it and I didn't have his exactly, had some
Speaker 1: great great grand nephew telling the story of Sir Harold
Speaker 1: Gillies to the world. And thank you so much for
Speaker 1: having this conversation. I've been such a fan for so long.
Speaker 1: This is just like we gotta get drinks when I'm
Speaker 1: in l A. Oh absolutely, okay, thank you, thank you
Speaker 1: so much. Noble Blood is a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Mankey. Noble Blood
Speaker 1: is hosted by me Danish Wortz. Additional writing and researching
Speaker 1: done by Hannah Johnston, hannah's Wick, Miura Hayward, Courtney Sunder
Speaker 1: and Laurie Goodman. The show is produced by rema Il Kayali,
Speaker 1: with supervising producer Josh Thayne and executive producers Aaron Mankey,
Speaker 1: Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from I
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.