Living With The Enemy

LIVING WITH THE ENEMY the documentary was inspired by the best selling book Living With The Enemy and the book Prison Without Bars. Here you can find out more about these titles.

Living With The Enemy

During the Second World War the Channel Islands were the only part of Britain to be occupied by German forces. Living with the Enemy tells the unique and true story of life in the Islands under Nazi rule. With eyewitness accounts from both Islanders and German soldiers this book gives an accurate insight into this ill-assorted community at war and portrays how it felt to be living in the shadow of a foreign power. A sample of what the United Kingdom would have experienced should it have fallen. The book includes over 125 original war time photographs of the Islands under Nazi rule and has a foreword by international best seller Jack Higgins.

Living With The Enemy was produced in 1995 by Simon Watkins and was first published in the same year by Starlight Publishing. It has been the best selling German Occupation title in the Channel Islands ever since and has been re-printed 12 times and is now published by Channel Island Publishing.

Due to the titles success, in 2003 the book was revised and translated into German and published in Berlin by Ch. Links Verlag under the title of Britische Inseln unterm Hakenkreuz. We are currently in the process of finding new publishers and distributors for this book around the world.

About the author: Roy McLoughlin's work in London began with reviewing novels and plays for the story Department of Twentieth Century Fox Films.He moved to the BBC as a radio announcer and later produced novelty entertainment, meanwhile contributing features to the Daily Express and the Allied Newspapers Group.

In this book, he sets the personal experience of Channel Islanders against a background of the German occupation of the islands during World War Two. His other published work includes: The Sea Was Their Fortune (A Maritime History of the Channel Islands) & Stewards of the Media (A History of the Media in Jersey).

(The book Living With The Enemy was produced in 1995 by Simon Watkins and was first published in the same year by Starlight Publishing. It has been the best selling German Occupation title in the Channel Islands and has since been re-printed 12 times and is now published by Channel Island Publishing).

Prison Without Bars

Frank Keiller was thirteen and living in Jersey when the Germans occupied the Channel Islands in 1940. During the ensuing five years he shared the various hardships common to his fellow Islanders. Moreover, he and his friends felt a particular sense of frustration at being forced to grow to maturity in what they felt was a 'prison without bars'. Such strong feelings led him into various encounters with the enemy - he punched a German soldier in the face when, in 1942 and on Hitler's orders, 'English' residents were deported. After D-Day, he attempted with others to reach the French mainland but failed after their highly unsuitable craft sank beneath them. He was court - marshalled twice but on both occasions avoided the death penalty. During his imprisonment he escaped and spent the rest of the Occupation on the run in Jersey.

Frank Keiller recounts not only his own experiences of life in Jersey during those five long years of Occupation but draws on many others' records, both published and unpublished. What emerges is a story of an Island people and their attempts to survive a time of their lives marked by fear and oppression.
Thanks to some sensationalist recently published accounts, it has become 'common knowledge' that Channel Islanders were collaborators. Frank Keiller's final chapter addresses the sensitive question of Resistance vs Collaboration in a calm, even-handed and objective manner.

To buy these or any other books in our occupation collection titles, click here.