How to get a gig as a TV historian? Wait for the phone to ring.
Professor Christine Hallett, Manchester's Professor of Nursing History, was contacted by the drama-makers who saw her 2009 book ‘Containing Trauma: Nursing Work in the First World War’, published by Manchester University Press.
After an initial chat, Professor Hallett was signed up as a historical advisor for the drama. This involved spending several months reading and commenting on scripts and a week working with the cast and production crew filming on location in Wiltshire and rubbing shoulders with actors including Oona Chaplin, Hermione Norris (Cold Feet, Spooks) and Suranne Jones (Coronation Street). The BBC drama by Sarah Phelps presents one of the Great War’s untold stories. Set in a tented field hospital on the coast of France, a team of doctors, nurses and women volunteers work together to heal the bodies and souls of men wounded in the trenches.
The hospital is a frontier: between the battlefield and home front, but also between the old rules, hierarchies, class distinctions and a new way of thinking. Hospital workers face a daily battle to patch the men up and keep the war machine churning. Staff numbers are low and the volunteers are desperately needed.
Professor Hallett spoke to the lead actors about what work would have taken place at a field hospital during the war and demonstrated some nursing techniques including bed bathing, bandaging, bed-making and aseptic and antiseptic wound care, used at the time to prevent infection spreading between soldiers’ wounds.
Read entire article at University of Manchester
After an initial chat, Professor Hallett was signed up as a historical advisor for the drama. This involved spending several months reading and commenting on scripts and a week working with the cast and production crew filming on location in Wiltshire and rubbing shoulders with actors including Oona Chaplin, Hermione Norris (Cold Feet, Spooks) and Suranne Jones (Coronation Street). The BBC drama by Sarah Phelps presents one of the Great War’s untold stories. Set in a tented field hospital on the coast of France, a team of doctors, nurses and women volunteers work together to heal the bodies and souls of men wounded in the trenches.
The hospital is a frontier: between the battlefield and home front, but also between the old rules, hierarchies, class distinctions and a new way of thinking. Hospital workers face a daily battle to patch the men up and keep the war machine churning. Staff numbers are low and the volunteers are desperately needed.
Professor Hallett spoke to the lead actors about what work would have taken place at a field hospital during the war and demonstrated some nursing techniques including bed bathing, bandaging, bed-making and aseptic and antiseptic wound care, used at the time to prevent infection spreading between soldiers’ wounds.