Ian Hislop: Jersey Under Occupation | Who Do You Think You Are? UK | Season 1 Episode 5
Who Do You Think You Are?
16,331 views
Ian Hislop follows a trail from occupied Jersey to South Africa's Spion Kop, uncovering soldiers, faith and a postcard that fixes his grandfather's steps in WWI.
In this Who Do You Think You Are? UK journey, Ian reflects on an expat childhood and the early loss of both parents before turning to the stories they rarely told. Home movies of the family’s global years give way to the hard realities his elders faced in war, on both his Channel Islands and Scottish lines.
On Jersey, Ian studies wartime registration cards and stark images of German flags draped over familiar British streets. With his mother’s classmates at St Helier’s Lido, he hears of hunger, nine breadless days, and clogs fashioned from wood and car tyres. At Oxenford House, founder Lucy Maney, now 98, recalls dances under occupation and the unshaken belief that victory would come.
In Scotland, fragments sketch his paternal grandfather, David Hislop: a Presbyterian teacher, Boys’ Brigade officer and temperance advocate. With Professor Callum Brown, Ian reads David’s austere talks on Augustine, the idea of education as assertion and repression, and the haunting wish for an x-ray of the soul. Former colleagues describe Newton Academy’s strict discipline and the grim impracticalities of fighting in a kilt.
A single postcard unlocks the Western Front. Addressed to David by a young Frenchman in Clary, it thanks him for liberation in October 1918. Welcomed by the town’s mayor, Ian and family retrace the 9th Highland Light Infantry’s assault up the Targell Ravine on the Hindenburg Line - fog-screened advances, savage machine-gun fire, heavy losses, and ground abandoned before a German withdrawal at dawn.
On his mother’s side, Private William Beddows of the Royal Lancaster Regiment endures Spion Kop. After a night climb in drizzle, the mist lifts and Boer rifle and artillery fire rake the ridge from Conical and Green Hill. A trench letter speaks of 16 hours with noses in the dirt as shells burst close. By dusk both sides withdraw, and the mass grave and that stark photograph seal the cost.
A late revelation adds an older soldier: Murdo Matheson of the Seaforth Highlanders, who landed near Simons Town in 1795 to take Cape Town before sailing on to India. Ian closes the loop on Lewis, at Stornoway and in Uig’s Garden of the Mathesons, seeing how defeat and resolve, faith and duty, shaped his family across two centuries.
#IanHislop #WhoDoYouThinkYouAre #JerseyOccupation #SpionKop #HindenburgLine #BoerWar #SeaforthHighlanders #FamilyHistory
4 Comments
It never ceases to amaze me when I think about how ANY British person watching this program will sympathise with the plight and the ‘horror’ of the occupation of the Channel Islands. However, the majority of us cannot/refuse to understand the horror of the plight of the Palestinian occupation.
Ian Hislop: Jersey Under Occupation | Who Do You Think You Are? UK | Season 1 Episode 5
Who Do You Think You Are?
16,331 views
Ian Hislop follows a trail from occupied Jersey to South Africa's Spion Kop, uncovering soldiers, faith and a postcard that fixes his grandfather's steps in WWI.
In this Who Do You Think You Are? UK journey, Ian reflects on an expat childhood and the early loss of both parents before turning to the stories they rarely told. Home movies of the family’s global years give way to the hard realities his elders faced in war, on both his Channel Islands and Scottish lines.
On Jersey, Ian studies wartime registration cards and stark images of German flags draped over familiar British streets. With his mother’s classmates at St Helier’s Lido, he hears of hunger, nine breadless days, and clogs fashioned from wood and car tyres. At Oxenford House, founder Lucy Maney, now 98, recalls dances under occupation and the unshaken belief that victory would come.
In Scotland, fragments sketch his paternal grandfather, David Hislop: a Presbyterian teacher, Boys’ Brigade officer and temperance advocate. With Professor Callum Brown, Ian reads David’s austere talks on Augustine, the idea of education as assertion and repression, and the haunting wish for an x-ray of the soul. Former colleagues describe Newton Academy’s strict discipline and the grim impracticalities of fighting in a kilt.
A single postcard unlocks the Western Front. Addressed to David by a young Frenchman in Clary, it thanks him for liberation in October 1918. Welcomed by the town’s mayor, Ian and family retrace the 9th Highland Light Infantry’s assault up the Targell Ravine on the Hindenburg Line - fog-screened advances, savage machine-gun fire, heavy losses, and ground abandoned before a German withdrawal at dawn.
On his mother’s side, Private William Beddows of the Royal Lancaster Regiment endures Spion Kop. After a night climb in drizzle, the mist lifts and Boer rifle and artillery fire rake the ridge from Conical and Green Hill. A trench letter speaks of 16 hours with noses in the dirt as shells burst close. By dusk both sides withdraw, and the mass grave and that stark photograph seal the cost.
A late revelation adds an older soldier: Murdo Matheson of the Seaforth Highlanders, who landed near Simons Town in 1795 to take Cape Town before sailing on to India. Ian closes the loop on Lewis, at Stornoway and in Uig’s Garden of the Mathesons, seeing how defeat and resolve, faith and duty, shaped his family across two centuries.
#IanHislop #WhoDoYouThinkYouAre #JerseyOccupation #SpionKop #HindenburgLine #BoerWar #SeaforthHighlanders #FamilyHistory