Bill Livingstone & Outlander

July 23, 2021 on 6:25 pm by Michael Grey | In News, Shout Outs! | Comments Off on Bill Livingstone & Outlander

This will be old news for avid readers of Diana Gabaldon‘s massively popular “Outlander” series of novels but it is news to me. This week, Sharon Duthart, in a random exchange related to mutual work, passed along an image her niece in Scotland had sent along – a phone pic of a page from an an Outlander book: The Drums of Autumn.

And, so, here it is – or a version of it. I’m guessing that many Outlander fans follow the streamed series and are not so much readers of the books. Like any book-to-movie, the book most often holds the author’s deeply intentional detail.

Here we see, in Gabaldon’s 1997 Outlander volume, one of the piping world’s most well-kent faces turn up, along with the 78th Fraser Highlanders Pipe Band – the band he led at the time (apparently “…practicing away at full blast …”, is there any other way?), the appearance of Bill Livingstone:

I’ve never seen the words “pipe band” hyphenated but will let that go and tip my hat to Diana Gabaldon for weaving a little of the real piping world into her mainstream-popular stories. More of that, please.

“…not that Bill Livingstone was intimidating on his own…”

Oh, Claire Randall.

M.