BONUS: Saving Face With Harold Gillies Part 2

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

I'm Bretzki, and you're in California.

And I'm here to tell you about SpinQuest.com, my favorite social casino.

With over a thousand slots and table games, absolutely free, with the ability to win real cash prizes instantly to your bank account.

There's no better time to hop on our $30 coin package for only a $10 deal.

Head over today.

I love you.

I'll see you there.

SpinQuest is a free-to-play social casino.

Voidwear prohibited.

Visit SpendQuest.com for more details.

Is your cash working hard for you right until the very moment you need it?

It could be if it was in a Wealthfront cash account.

With WealthFront, you can earn 4% annual percentage yield from partner banks until you're ready to invest, nearly 10 times the national average.

And you get free instant withdrawals to eligible accounts 24-7, 365.

4% APY is not a promotional rate, and there's no limit to what you can deposit deposit and earn.

And it takes just minutes to transfer your cash to any of Wealthfront's expert-built investing accounts when you're ready.

Wealthfront.

Money works better here.

Go to WealthFront.com to start saving and investing today.

Cash account offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC member FENRA SIPC.

Wealthfront is not a bank.

The APY on cash deposits as of December 27, 2024 is representative, subject to change, and requires no minimum.

Funds in the cash account are swept to partner banks where they earn the variable APY.

The national average interest rate for savings accounts is posted on FDIC.gov as of December 16, 2024.

Go to WealthFront.com to start today.

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

I'm Alex von Tunselman, and for BBC Radio 4, this is history's heroes.

People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone.

A couple of episodes ago, I told you the remarkable story of Harold Gillies, a surgeon during the First World War, who pioneered plastic surgery and transformed the faces of countless men who'd suffered profoundly disfiguring facial injuries.

We interviewed the brilliant Dr.

Lindsay Fitzharris, author of The Facemaker, a book about Harold Gillies.

So if you're joining us for the first time, or if you missed that episode, I recommend you go back and listen to that one first.

In this episode, though, I want to delve a bit deeper, to find out more about the real man behind all the faces, and also to think properly about the legacy he left behind.

After the Great War was over, Harold kept on operating, moving on to genital reconstruction during World War II and even gender reassignment surgeries.

He also branched into what were known then as beauty surgeries.

Today, cosmetic surgery is a big business.

So what really is Harold's legacy?

Is it all good or is it more complex than it might first appear?

I was thrilled to put some of these questions to Daniel Gillies, Harold's great-great-nephew, who grew up in New Zealand but now lives in Los Angeles as an actor.

You might know him from such titles as The Vampire Diaries and Saving Hope.

Daniel never met Harold, but he has come to know him in more recent times.

Tell me a bit about how you learned more about him.

He's just a sort of looming mythical figure.

I remember as a child digging around in my grandfather's attic with my brother and we stumbled upon, I believe, I couldn't be mistaken about this, I believe we stumbled upon some of Harold's older photograph

image notes and imagery.

There were multiple books, they were textbooks, but they were devoted to Harold's work.

And when we opened up, it was just a carnival of horror, you know, and we couldn't believe that the people that had been photographed were still alive with mandibles stripped, with you know, eyes missing, with noses gone.

Of course, because we were children, I think I must have been five or six seeing this.

Yeah, I'll never forget.

I couldn't believe that the survivors were conscious during the photographs.

I was like, how is this happening?

Now, as an adult, I can look back with deep reverence to Harold and for Harold, because no matter what we might think of him personally, and I think it's almost irrelevant when you think of how

abundantly evident it was that he was trying to restore these people back to their lives and how cripplingly devastated he was when he would discover that soldiers who he'd repaired from the brink of extinction were then reassigned back out to the to the field.

Do you know what I mean?

It was sent back out to war, which often happened, you know, and often these soldiers lost their lives.

He really did feel that they had served and the only task for them before them was to return home and be with their families.

I also caught up with Dr.

John Gillies, Daniel's father, about his memories of Harold.

I'm a great-nephew of Sir Harold.

My grandfather was Harold's brother.

As a child, he actually met Sir Harold Gillies.

I was about five or six years old.

I went with my father.

I remember this man coming off, I think it was the Dominion Monarch, was the ship that he was travelling on, which was the main sort of New Zealand, UK type means of travel.

He had been in the tropics and he had been suffering from malaria.

He came down the gangway and he was, I think, using a stick.

My overwhelming impression of Harold was that he he was a very charismatic person.

And my father, who's really not nervous or was really not nervous about most people and had met the Queen and that kind of stuff,

he was quite nervous about meeting Sir Harold and I remember him even doing it when he shook hands with him, doing a slight bow towards him,

which was interesting.

In my age, I was not overwhelmed by him in any way and he wasn't by me either, which was nice because he ruffled my hair and started to talk to me and he and I had a good sort of conversation during which time I asked him very bluntly if he would sign my autograph book which he did and he did a little profile portrait of himself on there as well.

It sounds like you and your father felt that you were kind of meeting a real celebrity here.

Absolutely.

We both did.

He was only on shore for an hour or two before he had to go back on and I think went down to Christchurch.

He was a tall, thin man.

He had a bit of a stoop and I think that stoop probably came from spending many hours over an operating table.

He was

a great smoker.

This is something which has stopped at that generation, I have to say.

And he had what they call the gilly's nose, which I'm relieved to say that our generation and my father's generation doesn't share particularly much.

Can we get a description of the gilly's nose?

Probably suitable for a head several times larger than it was.

And

it has a bulge at the bridge, bringing it sort of down.

It's a prominent feature of

his face.

Growing up in New Zealand, obviously you'd have heard about him, but I mean, especially from your family, what sort of stories did you hear about him growing up?

A mixed bag, really.

You know,

the idolatry and the worship naturally came, you know, with

his profound accomplishments.

But then there was also a kind of like,

from what I had gathered, he could be insufferable.

You know, he could be difficult to be around.

But I think he'd struggle to find anybody that gifted that wasn't kind of at least a little insufferable.

You know, he had that kind of

accidental good fortune, too, because

please forgive my language for saying that, but you know, what's the expression, cometh the man, cometh the hour, or whatever.

I do feel a little bit like, in the same way that Bill Gates was sort of exposed to all of this technology, for example, you know, through his mother, he just so happened to be at, you know, near a college at a time when, you know, computers were a new thing.

And, you know, similarly, I think that because of Harold's,

because of the war, essentially, and

to be vulgar, like this

embarrassment of riches in terms of injury,

I don't mean to be disrespectful to any of the people who were hurt, but it was a time to become great.

And I think not only did he have the desire to really seek new methods in terms of

surgical performance, but the time came to him in a sense, you know.

Yeah, absolutely.

I think that's a completely reasonable point.

I mean, you know, there was a need, right?

And, you know, a very great need.

And tell me a bit about how you learned more about him, because obviously, you know, you'd have this growing up and all that.

You moved away from that.

And then you encountered Lindsay's book.

And I think you first learned about that on social media.

I think

someone asked me, one of my fans, I think, had said something like,

well,

you know, I'll definitely get the audio book of that if Daniel Gillies is reading it.

And then Lindsay sort of seconded that and said something like, I'd love it if he did it.

And I just happened to see it and I said, I'll do it.

I'd do it in a heartbeat.

That's so amazing.

And I mean, how was it for you?

So to read that book, you must have learned a lot, I guess.

Everything.

I learned everything.

I knew nothing about this man.

Unfortunately, I don't have the same

medical inclinations as so many of my family before me.

So I just didn't,

I was trying to do my job at the same time as learning these breathtaking facts about this person who I don't think you can encapsulate how staggering the breadth of what he achieved was.

First of all, I don't know how he slept.

I don't know where he slept.

And by the way, nobody around him knew how he did either.

People around him had no idea how he managed to

like just thousands of soldiers and and often with repeat uh surgery so we had to remember that some of these soldiers had 16 17 18 20 30 procedures sometimes just an individual you know I don't know how he did what he did and it didn't just fall over dead so in your family Harold was a sort of almost mythical figure what form did that myth take how was he represented The most I knew about him was that

truly that plastic surgery sort of began with him.

That was the breadth of my understanding.

I understood that he was the

in essence the godfather of plastic surgery.

Oh god, look, as a kid, I would go to the doctor and I would meet, you know, physicians or whatever.

And even as an adult here in the United States, like people go, oh, your name is Gillies, you know, and sort of offhand, jokingly, they'll say, you're not related to Harold Gillies, are you?

And I'll say, matter of fact, I am, you know, and they'll be like, oh, my God.

And they'll want to know information wherever I travel.

It happened to me in england as well actually so it's interesting like he i guess he's he's thoroughly known in the medical community so there's there's that aspect of it but i i knew i knew in no detail what he had done i knew a little bit about the

it you know the chupedicle i knew a little bit about um skin grafts i knew that he performed the first um

sexual reassignment.

He was the first one to do.

I mean,

this is the thing that people forget about Harold is that he wanted to perform surgery.

Like at a time time when it wasn't, you know,

you have to think that when the war ended, like suddenly there's all of this new and burgeoning talent in this person, and there's almost no place to put it.

Harold didn't die with a lot of money.

He died with a knighthood, but he was also the guy who, you know, who cornered men and women at cocktail parties and said to them things like, you know, your nose would look lovely if it was, you know, I could give you a, you know, the tiger bell special or a i could make you look like an arabian queen which do you choose you know like he he wanted to operate like do you know what i mean like i mean i think he became a little bit like willie lowman at the end of his life i think he was the salesman the salesperson because there wasn't like if if howard could see what's going on now he would just be yeah i think he would be delighted you know i think i mean there's just an explosion but but there's even within the last 10 years we've seen developments in surgery surgery living in los angeles i'm just like you know i feel like i'm at the roam for um

for for for what harold created for good or for ill you know you grow up with this one image of the guy and it's kind of in a way it's quite a sort of sterile image you know it's oh he's the godfather of plastic surgery you read your book and you're learning about someone who's a much more fleshed out person And as you say, possibly kind of a difficult one.

I mean,

how did that change your

relation to him, really?

Your own perception?

So I guess one of my favorite stories about Harold, where I felt like

that held something personal for me, was in that encounter he had with Henry Tonks, who was, of course, this fabulous artist that he'd recruited among his other colleagues when he was essentially revolutionizing plastic surgery.

But and those burgeoning, very at the genesis of it all I think that there was a moment in which Harold like brought some paintings in I think for Henry to see I believe they were watercolors or something and he sort of laid them about the room and and I can't Henry said something to the tune of don't give up your day job basically

Now, there's differing stories about this because apparently Harold either threw one of the paintings and there's another one where he just snatched them up and sort of in a huff, like at a temporary touch so stormed out of the room i learned so much about him with that one anecdote i was just like that that to me is

it's about like needing to be thought of as great for everything and like oh i'm i'm marvelous in all these different directions and henry was like uh no you're not and that's okay because you're the surgeon i'm the you know it made me wonder about genius and i i feel like we're too flippant with that word particularly you know in the contemporary sense we We use it to,

we're too liberal with using this word genius.

But I do wonder with men and women with minds like this, I do wonder if there isn't something, you know, you can call it profound narcissism if you want, but it's also too, I do think that there has to be,

there has to be a sense of one's own mythology and greatness, do you know what I mean?

In order to be able to commit to

what he did and the way he did.

Let's Let's kind of dig into that a bit because I think it's really interesting because, you know, our show is called History's Heroes, and we talk a lot about what heroism is, what that means.

You know, I think we all think it's complicated, that most people are not purely perfect, and that it's always a kind of complex story.

And by the way,

I don't wish to denigrate, you know,

Harold in any way.

As an actor, like, my job is always to find the flaws and the bumps and the ingrown hairs and the zit.

It's my job to find those things because I want to hear the foibles.

It's not interesting unless I know who the man is.

When we were making this program, we did struggle a bit with Harold's perfectionism.

He seemed like a real overachiever, somebody who just did a thing, did another thing, did another thing.

And I think when you're looking at these people and yes, they're heroes, but the humanity is often in the gaps in the experience.

I mean, I would argue that it's all in the gaps, that that's the only thing we're really interested in.

I mean, it's what we reach for.

And of course, you can define heroism however you wish, but do you think we're right to call Harold a hero?

There are men and women that I

worship, adore, who I've never met and who I've read a great deal about.

And they're

often heroic and often really not, you know.

And I've often wondered about people who make enormous enormous contributions particularly to humanity

can we reconcile that side of their being with the side of them that's probably not quite so pleasant

and that can run in a whole spectrum right of of different

difficult behaviors you know and I just cannot answer that question

Do I think that his contribution to medicine was significant?

I do.

Do I feel that he was gratified by something that he felt was noble?

I 100% do, you know, and perhaps that's enough for us.

Yeah, do you think there is a kind of division between, obviously, he's a man who achieved a huge amount,

which could be seen as very heroic, but then there's also a potential moral side to heroism and that might see differently.

What do you see as the gap between those things?

I don't see those two things as mutually exclusive.

I just don't.

I find them a little bit inseparable.

Look, if we're going to go the whole Joseph Campbell route of defining a hero, it really does,

to be a little reductive, it's someone who sacrifices for something that's greater than oneself.

And at the end of the day, that's something that Harold did.

It's Bretzky, baby, and I don't know why they let me on the radio, but I do know you're in California, which means you can play on SpinQuest.com.

With over a thousand slots and table games, absolutely free, and with the ability to win real cash prizes with instant redemptions, your first $30 coin package is only $10 today.

Hurry up, SpinQuest.com.

SpinQuest is a free-to-play social casino.

Voidwear prohibited.

Visit spinquest.com for more details.

Want to stop engine problems before they start?

Pick up a can of C-Foam Motor Treatment.

C-Foam helps engines start easier, run smoother, and last longer.

Trusted by millions every day, C-Foam is safe and easy to use in any engine.

Just pour it in your fuel tank.

Make the proven choice with C-Foam.

Available everywhere.

Automotive products are sold.

Seafoam!

There's a moment every parent remembers, the day their child takes off on two wheels.

With Guardian bikes, that moment moment comes as early as two years old and with less stress and frustration.

These bikes are built just for kids.

Lightweight frames, low center of gravity, easy to use brakes.

Everything about Guardian is designed to help kids ride confidently, often in just one day, no training wheels needed.

And because Guardian bikes are designed and assembled right here in the USA, you know they're built to last with care in every detail.

Their patented sure-stop braking system stops both wheels with a single lever, helping your child stop safely without tripping forward or losing control.

Right now, save hundreds when comparing Guardian to its competitors at guardianbikes.com and get a free lock and pump when you join their newsletter of $50 value.

Visit GuardianBikes.com today to save and help your child learn an essential life skill safely.

Guardian Bikes, built for your kid and for the memories you'll never forget.

Let's talk about his legacy, his complicated legacy.

I mean, of course, you know, plastic surgery, like he was doing often reconstructive,

is kind of, and again, when we kind of get into the moral world of it, that's something that I think nobody would object to.

It's obviously incredibly helpful for people.

But as you know, you brought it up earlier, kind of cosmetic surgery has grown out of that.

He was part of that growing out of it.

I mean, do you think he had a sense of what he was setting in motion here?

I think Harold knew that he was at the genesis of this new

art, essentially, and it was an art.

I think that that's actually why he had the temper tantrum with the paintings.

Now that I think about it, and this has actually just occurred to me as I'm speaking to you, and now I think that the temper tension with the paintings was that he wanted to be thought of as an artist.

And yes, I think he absolutely

did not require a crystal ball of any kind to know that exponentially this was where his art was going.

And I mean, it's kind of totally fascinating to me that you, and I'm sure he would have been kind of mind-blown completely by the fact that there you are, you know, kind of a relative of his

in Hollywood, Beverly Hills, you know, this kind of part of the world where cosmetic surgery, I mean, it's kind of the shop front, right, for the world.

You know, people literally go to their surgeons and say, I want to look like Kim Kardashian, or, you know, give me this nose, whatever it is.

I mean,

is this something that kind of blows your mind?

That this, that.

Yeah, it's.

I worry as a father out here in Los Angeles, I've got an 11-year-old girl who's, you know,

just dipping her toes into womanhood here, you know, and I'm worried that this is the ubiquity of everything that's around her.

I'm almost mad at Harold for what he's wanted.

No,

look, I think that even he would acknowledge that

this is the hydra that keeps regrowing its heads, right?

Even he would would know that this was, that the lunatics were running the asylum, in a sense, out here.

And I don't want to be a proponent of this because

ought we not

be ambassadors for our children, especially our daughters, and say, and saying, hey, look, you are beautiful and you don't need to look like everybody else

in order to be beautiful.

I'd even love to say that I'm at the epicenter of it, but the more I travel, the more I'm seeing, I'm in London.

I noticed a lot of people were adjusted.

There are flights of men going out to Turkey now to go and rebuild all of this.

That's the big joke.

Men are doing TRT.

My age, especially, I'm 49 years old.

And

most men are now at 40 going, oh, I guess it must be time for my testosterone now.

I guess I'm doing steroids.

We're all sort of playing God in a way.

I think that Harold would think it was a goddamn carnival.

But then what do I know?

He was in the First World War and that

trench warfare must have led, like, it must have,

I don't care how

great a narcissist he was or might have been, which I, again, I think was the necessary evil of him to achieve the greatness he did.

His heart must have been obliterated by what he saw.

It's really interesting to think what Howard might have thought, because as you say, he also was selling cosmetic procedures, you know, later in life.

He did perform them.

And he was doing those for people.

And you must think about face.

So, I mean, look, given what you do,

you're an actor and your face is a huge tool of your trade.

I guess I'm just interested in,

you know, how much you think about this or how you think about this, how you use your face.

I don't think about it at all.

I don't think about this at all.

It doesn't even occur to me.

The only part of this that occurred to me is I was in a conversation yesterday with a friend of mine.

He works, he actually tapes actors to send off because people don't audition in the room anymore.

People send tapes now.

But the truth is,

I'm sorry to sound so cynical, but the truth is,

he was talking to me and I said to him,

I said,

I bet you I can tell you who works the most out of like out of the out of the people you you tape here and he said okay and i said

do you have a couple of like slightly oddball looking like men and women he goes here and i said i bet you anything they book more than anyone you tape for right he goes yes by like multiples of 10.

he said there's this misconception about hollywood and

good-looking people here are dime a dozen um but the oddballs funnily enough are the ones that work prolifically in my career and so it's not even good-looking guys are,

yeah, okay, sure, you're another one, get in line.

Like, if you are strange-looking and you can kind of act, you're going to work non-stop.

Look at Benedict Cummabatch.

I mean, he's an oddball.

He's also a fantastic actor.

It doesn't hurt.

But getting that foot in the door, like

in the beginning, like that's going to be,

I'm going to say it's

unusual.

Look, like someone like a Steve Buscemi or a John Taturo or a John Goodman, or there's this misconception here that we need to fix ourselves.

And once I'm there, then I'll be beautiful, then I'll get the thing.

And that myth is all pervasive and it's incredibly pernicious and

I think destructive.

And I think we should blame all of it on Harold.

But that's such an interesting point.

I mean, who knows?

Maybe the next next direction for surgery is actually giving people interesting work.

So, you know, I totally agree with you as well.

I think more interesting faces, I'm sure.

They're the ones.

I wanted just to go on a little bit to,

you know, like some other work that he did, because we know into World War II, he moved on to intimate surgeries, genital reconstruction, and then agenda reassignment surgery.

I mean, this is fascinating.

You must be enormously proud of

what he did.

100%.

You know,

and I sometimes wonder where he would stand because, you know, this is a fairly radioactive time for gender reassignment and,

you know, identification of pronouns and kind of like this.

It's been something of

a cultural upheaval.

And it's hard not to think of

Help being a bit of an ally and not even a little bit like an enormous ally.

That one struck me.

When I read about that,

I was like, that's more than progressive.

That's really beautiful.

A huge thank you to both Daniel Gillies and Dr.

John Gillies.

And join me next time on history's Heroes for Cardinal Sin, an archbishop who risked his reputation to mobilize his church against tyranny.

Hello, it's Lucy Worsley here, and we're back with a brand new series of lady swindlers.

Here we are in cell number one.

I'm just shutting us in, Ross.

Wow.

Following in the footsteps of some all-new criminals.

Can you take me down to the other end of Baker Street, please?

Perfectly jump in.

Thank you.

Join me and my all-female team of detectives as we revisit the audacious crimes of women trying to make it in a world made for men.

This is a story of working-class women trying to get by.

This is survival.

Lady Swindlers, season two with Lucy Worsley from BBC Radio 4.

Listen now on BBC Sounds.

The Mercedes-Benz Dream Days are back with offers on vehicles like the 2025 E-Class, CLE Coupe, C-Class, and EQE sedan.

Hurry in now through July 31st.

Visit your local authorized dealer or learn more at mbusa.com slash dream.

Your night in just got legendary.

Legends.com is the only free-to-play social casino and sports book where you can spin the reels, drop parlays, chase the spread, and hit up live blackjack without leaving your couch.

Slots, sports, original games, Legends has it all.

Win real prizes and redeem instantly straight to your bank.

Legends is a free-to-play social because you know Void Brohibit must be 18 pay responses.

Visit Legends.com for full details.

Get in the game now and score a 50% bonus on your first purchase only at legendswithaz.com.