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The Victor Hugo In Guernsey Society is still celebrating after its collaboration with The Tabernacle Choir saw a play about the French icon being broadcast across the United States.
That's just one of the organisation's highlights of 2024.
Chair, Dinah Bott said they are also looking ahead to 2025 - mainly with excitement.
Like all charitable organisations they need additional funding, and they would also like some new members too, both of which they hope will be achievable off the back of a successful 2024.
Ms Bott said the group have had many positives to celebrate from this year, which will live long in the memory.
Pictured: Events have been held throughout the year.
"The highlights of 2024 for the Victor Hugo in Guernsey Society were our Guernsey Weekend (in English) discussing Victor Hugo and the Ocean, available now on the Society's YouTube channel, and our collaboration with The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square, which has resulted in ‘Victor Hugo’s Wondrous Feast’, a play about Victor Hugo and the Poor Children of Guernsey, being broadcast all over America as part of their world-famous Christmas Concert."
Narrated by Lesley Nicol of Downton Abbey fame, the concert’s setting is Guernsey itself, with Castle Cornet, the Guernsey standard, the Guernsey skyline and Hauteville House very prominently featured, and Guernsey clearly named in the play. Ms Bott said this reinforces the iconic writer's links with the island, which they are keen to promote.
"The writers based the play on the very same words Victor Hugo used at the children's’ Christmas parties in Hauteville House in the 1860s, published then by the local newspapers and copied around the world, to broadcast Hugo’s message of love in action once again 160 years later," she explained.
The broadcast of the play across America was a "great achievement" Ms Bott said, thanking everyone involved in the project.
"This is a great achievement for the Society, to help to bring Victor Hugo in Guernsey to the American public’s attention, to reveal what a great humanitarian he was, and at the same time to publicise Guernsey.
"We are eternally grateful to the creative team of the Tabernacle Choir for seeing the potential in this story and for their beautiful and sympathetic interpretation of the events in Guernsey, which were the direct result of Victor Hugo wishing to show everyone how the message of Les Misérables could be enacted in real life."
Looking ahead to 2025, the Victor Hugo in Guernsey Society say it is facing similar challenges to other charities and organisations.
"Our greatest challenge is always obtaining funding for our activities," said Ms Bott.
"We exist to promote and to celebrate the link between Victor Hugo and Guernsey, which we do by hosting events, working with schools, and providing advice and help to visitors and scholars alike," she explained.
Pictured: Victor Hugo is immortalised in granite at Candie Gardens.
"Not only is Victor Hugo one of the world’s greatest ever writers, playwrights, poets and artists, he is also one of the world’s great humanitarians whose message is very much relevant today. His friend and mistress, Juliette Drouet, loved Guernsey and is fast becoming a literary icon in her own right."
Funding their activities is a challenge for the Victor Hugo in Guernsey Society as a whole, but Ms Bott is confident in the benefits their work can bring to the island, its culture, and its economy.
"Victor Hugo called himself ‘The Voice of Guernsey’ and is one of the island’s unique assets," she said. "We must keep on working to promote him and his work, not just for his own sake, but for the sake of Guernsey, too."
An aim for the Victor Hugo in Guernsey Society is to recruit more members.
Ms Bott said the group is open to anyone who would like to join in their activities and events.
"We would love some more new members! Anyone with an interest in Victor Hugo is most welcome to join us, and the world of Victor Hugo is fascinating, very varied, and sometimes surprising, just as he was.
"Our activities are all in English, so there's no need to know French. Look out for some exciting local events planned for next year!
"But most of all, we wish more people around the world would read and act on Victor Hugo’s message of peace, empathy and kindness, as exemplified in Les Misérables and in the Tabernacle Choir’s ‘Victor Hugo’s Wondrous Feast’. Using our events and our social media we will do our best to help ‘The Voice of Guernsey’ to be heard again around the world in 2025."
Visit the Society Website for more information and to join.
Pictured top: A still from the Victor Hugo's Wondrous Feast performance.
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