'Oh happy night, enchanting sight, 'Neath garlands gay and floods of light, Brilliant eyes, balmy sighs, Shaming flow'r and lustre bright.' A report from the Star of 11 January, 1836. The photograph is a late 19th-century carte de visite, one of several in the Library Collection of subjects in fancy dress.
'But oh! what a tragic story we have to relate.' The bravery of a group of men from the Castel and their untimely deaths on the Gros Rock, March 9th, 1818; Nicolas Dobree, R.N., the two brothers Henry and George Le Tissier, Daniel Nicolle, and Captain Collenette. The photograph above shows the rock. 'Ils ont peri, meme en accomplissant un oeuvre de charite.'
A well-known tale of intrigue in Renaissance Brittany, in one of its earliest and near-contemporary versions, from The Monthly Illustrated Journal (Guernsey Magazine), February, 1873. The Editor describes this as 'a free translation of an interesting account of a disputed identification case, which occurred in the latter part of the 16th century, and in which Guernsey figures; it is taken from a work entitled La Vie de François, Seigneur de la Nouë, kindly lent to us by Mr Thomas Lenfestey, des Fontaines, for the purpose.' The illustration below is a detail from Sydney's Arcadia, published by Ponsonby in 1589, in the Library collection; the portrait above is of François de la Nouë, dit Bras-de-fer, from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
Mercure, Saturday, February 15th, 1823. Thursday, after an illness lasting several days, Demoiselle Marthe Le Lièvre, daughter of Mr. Thomas Le Lièvre, of Hauteville.
A genealogist's nightmare, from The Comet of February 9, 1854.
Who put the rat poison in the wine? Françoise Archenaux, who on Saturday sennight was convicted by the Royal Court of having attempted to poison the family of Mr Daniel Grut LE MASURIER, underwent a part of her sentence by being placed in the cage in the public Market from half-past eleven to half-past twelve. On the four squares of the cage was fastened a printed label signifying the crime for which she was punished, it read thus, namely, Empoisonneuse. There was a multitude of both sexes present to witness the exhibition, whom she addressed at some length, but of the purport of her harangue we know nothing.
Deutsche Guernsey Zeitung, The Guernsey Press, Guernsey, 1942-45; Deutsches Leben, Guernsey, 1943; and other materials produced by or for the occupying forces, 1940-45. [By Dinah Bott]
'Longevity of freshwater eels' from The Guernsey Press, 20 January 1912.
The Star, June 15th, 1915. Not entirely accurate!
The proprietor of the short-lived but interesting newpaper Le Publiciste, the printer and publisher Thomas Greenslade, published a letter in his newspaper on 26th December 1812, highlighting his disagreement with his editor, Thomas de la Rue. De la Rue was busy starting up his own newspaper in Guernsey, Le Miroir Politique, which had its first issue in February 1813, and went on to found the printing company that still bears his name.
