Are you looking for a professional guide to take you on a battlefield tour? Are you working as a battlefield guide, would you like to find out more about becoming validated as a battlefield guide?
The International Guild of Battlefield Guides is the foremost organisation dedicated to touring the battlefields. We enable guides and historians to share information, expertise and knowledge; we help visitors to find accredited battlefield guides who can help them to explore the past. We all have one thing in common: a love of military history and a desire to ensure the sacrifices of past generations in war are not forgotten.
Our Honorary Members include Tonie and Valmai Holt, the pioneers of battlefield guiding, and our Guild President is the award-winning historian and author, Dr. Spencer Jones.
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Coming Up
Normandy Recce
The Guild will be running a recce in Normandy in November 2023. Dates are Friday 3 November to Sunday 5 November. The aim is to cover the British and Canadian break out battles. Please note the dates in your diary for now.
Full details will be available in the New Year and we will be asking for names then.
We are looking for three or more experienced guides to volunteer, one to lead each day. Once we have the leads for each day or part of a day we can then pull the programme together. We can split the days up between lead guides if we need to.
The general topics for each day are likely to be:
- Day 1 – Op GOODWOOD, TOTALIZE and TRACTABLE.
- Day 2 – Op EPSOM, Hill 112 and Villers Bocage.
- Day 3 – Op BLUECOAT and Mount Pincon.
There is an option to do either Falaise, or Op COBRA and the Americans at St Lo, and if someone wanted to volunteer to do one of those we could drop one of the other topics.
If you would like to volunteer to take on one of the main topics as lead guide please get in touch with Simon Burgess on sfb22@hotmail.com.
RIchard Holmes Lecture
The 2023 Richard Holmes Lecture will be given at the In & Out Club by British Commission for Military History members Major-General (retd) Mungo Melvin and Mike Shiel, the title being Richard Holmes: Soldier, Scholar, Guide and Friend and the talk will start at 7pm. The address of the In & Out Club is 4 St James’ Square, London, SW1Y 4JU.
Tickets are £35, which will include wine, and can be bought from:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/richard-holmes-lecture-2023-tickets-717022542727?aff=oddtdtcreator
Annual Conference & AGM 2024
Our Annual Conference and AGM weekend will be held in the Doubletree Hotel, Lincoln. We will include the usual mix of activities – validation opportunities, Guild AGM (Saturday afternoon), Guild Awards Dinner, a quiz, bring-and-buy stall, and a range of speakers.
There will be a pre-Conference visit to the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, with a hangar floor visit.
More details can be found in the overview here. Note that applications, and a deposit, must be with the Secretary by 1 July 2023; the application form is here.
Ypres Recce
The Guild will conduct an Ypres recce 11-15 March 2024 , very much along the lines of the 2022 Guild Somme recce. The purpose will be to focus on some of the lesser known aspects of the Immortal Salient. The outline programme will be:
- 11 March. Deploy
- 12 March. The Indian Corps in the Salient 1914-1915
- 13 March. The Logistics of 3rd Ypres 1917
- 14 March. The Battle of the Lys 1918
- 15 March. Recover
Transport will be in shared cars
Please indicate interest to John Cotterill on john.cotterill@btinternet.com, so that he can look at accommodation in Ypres , which is always difficult to arrange for large numbers at short notice.