Broadcast on Tuesday evening, the programme showed bookbinder Chris Shaw painstakingly rebuilding the diary from 1942.
It was written by Lillian Le Page, nee Helyar, and now belongs to her grandson, Roger, who took the book to the show’s headquarters in Sussex earlier this year to see what could be done.
Viewers also heard the tale of how Mr Le Page’s grandfather made a daring escape from the island to England.
Mr Le Page now lives in Essex and he and his own grandson, Thomas, outlined its history to the programme’s Dom Chinea and Mr Shaw.
He explained how the diary had been passed to him when his mother died in 2021 and she had inherited it from his grandmother, Lillian, who had died when Mr Le Page was nine.
‘It was the saddest day of my life,’ he said.
The escape was planned and executed by his grandfather and the owner of a fishing boat he used, saving bits of fuel and sneaking to the boat after curfew to fill the tank.
Once this was done they got away and ended up settling down in Essex.
The boat itself now sits outside the German Occupation Museum, whose owner Richard Heaume has put up an interpretation board telling visitors its history.
He has seen the restored diary himself, when Mr Le Page lent it to him after the programme was recorded.
The story in the diary that stood out to him was about how Mr Le Page’s grandmother and other islanders had worn V symbols on a day in May.
‘To me, the most significant thing in the diary is where she wrote “Today we all wore V signs”. That’s a very public statement to make.
‘Wearing these V sign badges would have got you arrested in France,’ he said.
More might have been made of that story on the programme but Mr Le Page said he had not picked up on it before.
Mr Heaume said the museum has quite a number of similar books, Guernsey Press diaries, with covers made of straw, and they were not designed to be kept for decades.
After the TV programme showed clips of Mr Shaw painstakingly taking the book apart and re-binding it using a traditional French catch-stitch, it was time for the restored book to be unveiled, with Mr Le Page saying he was ‘tingling with excitement’ to see it.
He was visibly moved at what he saw. ‘It’s just making me think of my gran,’ he said as his grandson comforted him.
The diary is now being kept safe at Mr Le Page’s home.
‘We’ll show anybody, but only if they ask and preferably if they are family or good friends,’ he said yesterday.
‘It’s going to stay in the family. Richard Heaume would have loved it to go on display, even temporarily, but I said it’s got to stay with us.’
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