The Islands Pre-War

Abstract

The Channel Islands are situated off the north-west coast of France, being around 60 miles from the most northern point to the nearest part of England, and only 9 miles from Alderney to the Cap de la Hague on the French coast. The four best-known Islands are Jersey, which has been affectionately described as a pile of pink granite, approximately 12 miles long and 5 miles wide; Guernsey, described as not so pink but with 25 square miles of granite rock; Alderney, the ‘Cinderella’ of the Islands, only about 4 miles long by one and a quarter miles wide; and Sark, a hereditary Seigneurie, which has an even smaller land mass, and which is rather intriguingly described by Peter Rivett as being Tike a hall of mirrors where nothing is quite what it seems to be’.¹ Lesser islets are Herm, Brechou, Jethou and Lihou, which are all to be found amongst a labyrinth of various rocks and reefs.

If there are two qualities upon which Channel Islanders pride themselves it is their loyalty and their independence. These qualities they possess in common with all the British race.

— Nos Isles, A Symposium on the Channel Islands, March 1944