{"product_id":"guernsey-by-heart","title":"Guernsey By Heart: Island Stories, Old Words \u0026 the Things Worth Passing On","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn June 1940 about five thousand Guernsey children went down to the harbour with their teachers and got on boats to England.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMost of them spent the next five years in mill towns in the north. When they came home in 1945, some of them came home with northern accents. A lot of them could no longer talk properly to their own grandparents, because the grandparents spoke Guernésiais and five years away had taken it out of them.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThat is the quiet moment the island's own language broke. Not in a law or a vote. At kitchen tables, one family at a time.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn 2001 there were 1,327 fluent speakers left. A few years ago the Language Commission put the number at fewer than a hundred, almost all of them elderly.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis book is about what's still here. The stories, the words, the food, the stones and the arguments that make Guernsey Guernsey, written down while the people who carry them can still put us right.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI'm not from Guernsey, and this book doesn't pretend I am. It's built from the island's own records and from the people who took the trouble to write its stories down. And it ends with a kit to help you get the rest from the people at your own table.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eWHO IT'S FOR\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eIf you were born here, it's your island told back to you, with enough you didn't know to start a row at Sunday dinner.\u003cbr\u003eIf you left, for university or work or love, it's home in your pocket, and a good Christmas present for the one in the family who went to England and stayed.\u003cbr\u003eIf your family were evacuees, or took evacuees in up north, it's the other half of the story.\u003cbr\u003eIf you moved here, it's the island underneath the one you live on.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0942\/8218\/7134\/files\/guernsey-inside.jpg?v=1791279254\" alt=\"What's inside Guernsey By Heart, the evacuation, Guernesiais, folklore, the Muratti, bean jar and the ten parishes\" width=\"900\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eTHE BOATS, AND WHAT CAME HOME\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe evacuation as families remember it, the five years on both sides of the water, and Liberation Day. The hard parts too, because the island deserves the true version and not the tidy one.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eTHE WORDS\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Guernésiais still hiding in everyday island English. How to say the place names properly, parish by parish. What the language sounds like, where you can still hear it, and the people working to bring it back.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eTHE GRAN'MÈRE, THE WITCHES AND THE FAIRIES\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe stone woman at the gate of St Martin's church, carved more than four thousand years ago, broken on a churchwarden's orders in 1860 and put back together after the parish wouldn't stand for it. Why brides still give her flowers. The witches of Le Catioroc, the fairy passage at Le Creux ès Faïes, and the folklore Marie de Garis spent a lifetime collecting.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0942\/8218\/7134\/files\/guernsey-spread.jpg?v=1791279254\" alt=\"A real two-page spread from Guernsey By Heart, Chapter Six, The Grandmother at the Gate\" width=\"900\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eDONKEYS, CRAPAUDS AND THE MURATTI\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhere the nicknames came from, every version of the story, and the football match that has been trying to settle the matter since 1905.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eTHE KITCHEN\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eBean jar, and the arguments over it. Gâche, and the apple gâche melée. Ormering and the rules that come with it. Hedge veg and the honesty box, which might be the most Guernsey thing there is.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eTHE ONES WHO CAME AND STAYED\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eVictor Hugo's fifteen years at Hauteville House. Renoir at Moulin Huet in 1883. And Amelia Le Pelley, the island's first practising woman doctor, whose story was barely known until Ladies' College students dug it up and got her a blue plaque this summer.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eTEN PARISHES\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe whole island walked one parish at a time, with one story from each that the people who live there will recognise and the people who don't will want to go and see.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eTHE ASKING KIT\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe part worth the price on its own. A plain list of questions to ask your oldest relatives this winter, set out so it feels like a chat and not an interview. How to record it on your phone without making anyone nervous. And how to make sure that recording outlasts all of us.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0942\/8218\/7134\/files\/guernsey-asking.jpg?v=1791279254\" alt=\"The Asking Kit, questions to ask your oldest relatives this winter\" width=\"900\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp style=\"text-align:center\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBuying from Guernsey?\u003c\/strong\u003e At checkout, choose \u003cstrong\u003eGuernsey\u003c\/strong\u003e as your country, not United Kingdom, and put in your full postcode, both halves. A GY postcode won't go through under United Kingdom.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp style=\"text-align:center\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/rootsand-routes.com\/cart\/58159430828414:1\" style=\"display:inline-block;background:#1d4a40;color:#f3e6ca;padding:16px 40px;border-radius:4px;text-decoration:none;font-weight:bold;letter-spacing:1px\"\u003eGET GUERNSEY BY HEART\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eWHAT YOU GET\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eGuernsey By Heart. Around 20 chapters and 60 pages, plus the asking kit, a guide to saying the place names and a short glossary. A PDF laid out to read on a phone, tablet, laptop or e-reader. It downloads the moment you pay. Nothing comes in the post.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eWHAT IT ISN'T\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt isn't a tourist guide with opening times, and it isn't someone from away pretending to be born and bred. It's careful, it's sourced, and it's written with a lot of respect for an island that has been told about itself by outsiders for long enough.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eYOU CAN CORRECT IT\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eIf I've got something wrong, or missed the story your family tells, email me. It gets fixed, credited to you if you'd like, and everyone who has the book gets the new version free. However many times that happens.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0942\/8218\/7134\/files\/guernsey-updates.jpg?v=1791279254\" alt=\"You can correct it, with free updates for life\" width=\"900\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIf you're a donkey born and bred and you get to the end without learning something about your own island that you didn't know, email me and I'll refund you.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eTim Morris\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp style=\"text-align:center\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBuying from Guernsey?\u003c\/strong\u003e At checkout, choose \u003cstrong\u003eGuernsey\u003c\/strong\u003e as your country, not United Kingdom, and put in your full postcode, both halves.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp style=\"text-align:center\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/rootsand-routes.com\/cart\/58159430828414:1\" style=\"display:inline-block;background:#1d4a40;color:#f3e6ca;padding:16px 40px;border-radius:4px;text-decoration:none;font-weight:bold;letter-spacing:1px\"\u003eGET GUERNSEY BY HEART\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Roots \u0026 Routes","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":58159430828414,"sku":"GSY-BH-01","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0942\/8218\/7134\/files\/guernsey-cover.jpg?v=1791279254","url":"https:\/\/rootsand-routes.com\/products\/guernsey-by-heart","provider":"Roots \u0026 Routes","version":"1.0","type":"link"}