Historian Dan Snow is back in Alderney

The historian and adventurer was exploring with Visit Guernsey to promote island hopping throughout the Bailiwick.

Mr Snow is fronting a Visit Guernsey documentary on the islands of the Bailiwick to go out next year and to coincide with the 75th anniversary of the Liberation.

In 2019 he was appointed history ambassador for Visit Guernsey.

Last weekend he spent time on Guernsey before hopping across the water to Alderney and with Guernsey Digital Marketing manager Pete Amory and a film crew was taken on a whistlestop tour of some of the island’s foremost historical attractions.

He enthused about the Victorian forts on a blustery day at Houme Herbe, and also visited the Odeon bunker, a Second World War communications tower and Alderney’s museum. He also talked to German fortifications historian Trevor Davenport and a wartime evacuee.

It is the second time Snow has visited Alderney this year.

In July he visited to dive for K18 guns which were involved in shelling Allied shipping after D-Day in 1944.

The team had planned to do more filming for that project, to be aired on his online channel History Hit TV, but bad weather intervened.

Mr Snow, the son of broadcaster Jon Snow, revealed he was a big fan of Alderney.

‘I sailed here as a kid and we came to stay at Fort Clonque for my dad’s 60th birthday. What I love about it is that there’s this remarkable concentration of historical sites here from Victorian forts to WW2 bunkers. And it’s all here to be visited. It’s real – you can explore and find things for yourself. I’m lucky enough to be brought here by Visit Guernsey because they realise what a resource this is.’

He said that for him the Nunnery was the most fascinating building on Alderney – rendered even more so because of the extensive Roman site being discovered nearby.

‘I’ve never seen a site like it and next to nothing is known about it outside of the island.’