Welcome to British Isles Friday! British Isles Friday is a weekly event for sharing all things British and Irish — reviews, photos, opinions, trip reports, guides, links, resources, personal stories, interviews, and research posts. Join us each Friday to link your British and Irish themed content and to see what others have to share. The link list is at the bottom of this post. Pour a cup of tea or lift a pint and join our link party!

Last week, I enjoyed the color and magic of Wonka. Tina enjoyed the Irish setting and characters in The Book Club by Roisin Meaney. Jeanie shared the last day of her recent trip to England.

The 14th season of Call the Midwife recently aired on BBC One and PBS. This season covers 1970. I was eight that year, so I recognize the fashions and feelings of the time. You can tell in this preview that some of the older cast members share my memories of that time.

In this season, the sisters worried not only about losing Nonnatus House (which has been a frequent concern in recent years) but also about whether their order would survive in the modern world.

Before I started watching Call the Midwife, I didn’t know that there were Anglican nuns. As it turns out there are religious orders in both the Lutheran and Anglican traditions, plus a few others. I suppose it makes sense that two of the oldest Protestant denominations would retain these practices from the established Catholic pattern.

I got curious about whether Anglican religious orders continued into the modern day. It turns out that they do!

The sisters of Nonnatus House belonged to the Community of St. John the Divine, which still exists. They even have a page on their website about Call the Midwife! Reading between the lines, though, it seems that they are now a very small community of aging sisters who are trying to figure out how to wind down the order in a meaningful way.

I was also intrigued by an Episcopal religious order in Wisconsin, The Order of Julian of Norwich. Julian of Norwich was the medieval anchoress who wrote “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” That led me to want to learn more about her, an exploration that I’m sure will yield at least one British Isles Friday post.

This BBC article reports that filming has already begun for the 2025 Christmas season and for Season 15 of the series. The article also had the exciting announcement of a prequel series about the nurses of Nonnatus House during World War II. That’s right up my alley!

And, they announced both a season 16 and a film project that will take our favorite characters into 1972. So, we have a lot more Call the Midwife to look forward to.