About Blue Ormer
Blue Ormer Publishing was established by Steve Foote in 2014, with the aim of publishing books with a connection to the Channel Islands.
Steve was born in Guernsey and is fascinated by local and family history, having written many articles on the island’s past and present.
He was instrumental in updating and republishing Peter Johnston’s A Short History of Guernsey for the Guernsey Society in 2014, and became Editor of The Review of the Guernsey Society in 2016.
In 2014, he founded Blue Ormer and the first publication – Genius Friend – Edward Chaney’s biography of G.B. Edwards, author of The Book of Ebenezer Le Page – was published in 2015, and launched at the Guernsey Literary Festival.
Since then, Blue Ormer has gone from strength to strength – with a catalogue of over 40 books in print, many of which can be found in local bookshops in the Channel Islands – as well as being available from our online store.
In the store, you will also find a selection of other local books – including those published by Toucan Press, the Guernsey Museum and a carefully-curated selection of books by local self-published authors.
As well as working on publishing and launching books – you will find us at the Guernsey Literary Festival as well as our own pop-up stall at Seafront Sundays, Lé Viaër Marchi and Christmas markets.
Featured Books
Following the success of his first book, Guernsey Past & Present from the exact spot – intrepid comparison photographer Marco Tersigni has teamed up with Occupation historian and collector Simon Hamon to bring you a brand new selection of images.
Drawing on Simon’s collection of rare and previously unpublished photographs of the Occupation, they have risked all to locate the exact spots for Marco’s comparison images.
They show, many for the first time, haunting comparisons of familiar island scenes filled with unfamiliar occupying forces – and fascinating commentary from a leading occupation historian.
Join Marco and Simon on a tour of Guernsey during the occupation from the bombing of the White Rock in June 1940 to the arrival of the Liberating Forces in May 1945 – from the exact spot.
This is the only diary of the Occupation of the Channel Islands written by a German from a German point of view. And not just any German but a Franconian nobleman in the shape of Hans Max Baron von und zu Aufsess. He came to the islands in 1942 as a staff officer in the German Military Government of the Channel Islands. He left in May 1945 as a prisoner-of-war bound for interment on the British mainland.
His diary chronicles in detail his dealings with the civilian population, his ‘parishioners’ as he called them, and with the leading island politicians in Jersey and Guernsey. There were disagreements and wrangles but by and large Aufsess managed to oversee an occupation considerably less oppressive than any other in Europe.
In 1944, as the war turned against Germany, Aufsess was forced to re-assess his political loyalties in the face of the inevitable defeat. Should he support the fight for an impossible ‘Final Victory’ which would surely mean the annihilation of the civil population or follow the path to surrender in the name of humanity and sound military sense? Aufsess’s account of his struggle to find a way through makes for compelling reading and this diary a major contribution to Occupation history.
Edited by Tobias Arand
Translated from the German by Susanne and Robert Crooker
With an Introduction by John Nettles
Over the past five hundred years, the tiny island of Guernsey has found seven amazingly different ways to earn an important place in the world’s economy.
Each time the island’s financial system looked like it was about to collapse, somehow the people of Guernsey managed to reinvent a way for making a living and create a Guernsey ‘brand’ that was known and appreciated far beyond its borders.
From knitting to privateering, ship building to quarrying, and from tomato growing to tourism, Guernsey people have demonstrated resilience, ingenuity, and independence, often having to stand up to Government interference, overcoming major technology shifts and uncovering ways to access new markets.
The most recent of these seven reinventions, the finance industry, is now a mature sixty years old. In this book, Andrew Doyle explores the growth and death of its six predecessors, which provide some lessons for how Guernsey’s current major money earner can continue to flourish.
June 1940 and war is sweeping across Europe. In the tiny Channel Island of Guernsey, Kathleen is about to board a ship that will take her to safety. As they embrace, Charles tells her he will see her again soon; a couple more shi s as an essential worker and he will be free to follow. But his plans are soon to be thwarted by the arrival of the Germans.
Decades later, when an email from a stranger brings a whisper from the past, Charles and Kathleen’s legacy begins to unfold. As the cold, lonely echoes of war begin to rewrite her family’s story, their daughter is led to discover that, sometimes, it is the people closest to us that surprise us the most.