JERSEY’S position as the birthplace of British surfing will be recognised in a history of the sport being published this winter.

Surfing historian Roger Mansfield has written The Surfing Tribe: A History of British Surfing, the first comprehensive look at the history of surfing in the country. Mr Mansfield, a regular visitor to the Island, was British surfing champion in 1970 and was the curator of the Surf’s Up! exhibition that toured museums up and down the country for two and a half years. His book tells the story of the formation of Europe’s oldest surf club, the Island Surfboard Club of Jersey, by Nigel Oxenden in 1923, when surfers were riding waves lying down, Jerseyman Gordon Burgis’s wins in the first two European surfing championships in 1969 and 1970, and the work of Dave Grimshaw on local, national and international surf bodies. The book’s second chapter is called The Channel Islands Did it First, and he says that the importance of early Jersey pioneers to the sport’s progress in Britain should be recognised.