Before he starred in the television series Midsomer Murders, actor John Nettles had a great run on a BBC-TV series called Bergerac. Set on the island of Jersey, Nettles played a detective hunting down drug lords and money launderers on the 9 x 5 mile isle (we could use him here in Vancouver, actually).
But Jim Bergerac was a fictional character. John Nettles, with an academic background in history and philosophy, had a tendency to look around the island he worked and played on during the 1980s. What he found, and luckily wrote about, was a place bathed in history. On Jersey, he found echoes of wartime occupations, most notably in the gun placements and fortifications throughout the centuries, as well as many other tales of interest to the reader of history.
Nettles describes, through various anecdotes, including those from his own research while filming at various locations on the island, the twelve parishes that make up the island. Most notable, for me, is the chapter on St. Lawrence, in which he discusses the German occupation of Jersey during the Second World War. It was a perplexing and terrifying time, in which there were food shortages, lack of medical supplies, and, at one point, the British attacked their own island. It made for a fascinating sociological experiment in retrospect, with German soldiers and local women developing relationships and settling down together. The effects of the occupation can still be seen on Jersey.
John Nettles has since then, gone on to pursue his interest in this history, by writing the book Jewels and Jackboots and pursuing documentary projects. I find it wonderful that Mr. Nettles did more than work and play on Jersey: he observed and studied the place, asked questions about why it was the way it was. What he gathered for Bergerac’s Jersey, albeit steeped in a book swimming in the celebrity associated with a popular TV series, is a boon to historians and visitors alike. Festooned with photography by Kim Sayer, illustrations by Michael Roquefort, the book is a testament to what an actor with curiosity for local history can do with his time after the director shouts “cut.”
Author: John Nettles
Book: Bergerac’s Jersey
Publisher: BBC Books
Year of Publication: 1988
