Rachel Weisz is to play Dr James Barry, the mysterious figure who was a high-achieving medical doctor in the all-male profession in the first half of the 19th century, but who was identified as a woman after dying of dysentery in 1865.
Based on Rachel Holmes’s book The Secret Life of Dr James Miranda Barry: Victorian England’s Most Eminent Surgeon, this is due to be the first feature on the subject.
Also recorded is a posting to the Crimea in the 1853-56 war, during which Barry had a ferocious argument with Florence Nightingale.
Barry was born Margaret Ann Bulkley in Cork, Ireland, in about 1790, but then gained a place at Edinburgh’s celebrated medical school after adopting a male disguise.