The guide directory details all those Accredited Members who have chosen to advertise their expertise and services as guides on the Guild website. Each of these has passed our Accreditation Programme in which they have demonstrated the skills needed for us to say that they are high-quality guides who will give you a great tour.
You can filter by battle/campaign or country and then click on the name of an Accredited Guide to read their biography. Most Accredited Guides have contact details by which you can contact them directly. If not, or if you want to pass a message to them, please contact them via the Guild Secretary via our Contacts Page.
Many Guides can develop bespoke personalised tours and can research where particular ancestors might have fought or died. If you want to advice on following a particular ancestor and you have not identified a particular Accredited Guide, please contact the Guild Secretary. We guarantee we’ll have somebody that can help you!
Please note, the Guild does not recommend or endorse any of the commercial products or companies of the members listed below. We are not responsible for checking that those listed below have complied with the relevant legislation or regulations in the jurisdictions they are based or guide in. Many are members of ETOA or other local guiding associations and some have a local permit to work with children or vulnerable adults. But it is your responsibility to ensure they meet all the criteria you need for them to work with your group.
Finally, this list shows only our Accredited Guides. Our Ordinary Members are not listed here and if you would like to check whether a particular individual is a member of the Guild, or for any other further help, please contact the Guild Secretary via our Contacts Page.
Some of our Accredited Guides have experience of researching military aspects of family history, and may be able to assist with your genealogical enquiries. A list of those members is here; if you would like to seek their assistance, contact details can be found by selecting their profile from those shown on this page.
Frank Baldwin
Accredited Guide Number: 8
I am a freelance guide, historian and heritage professional. After retiring following ten years in the army as a Royal Artillery Officer, I became increasingly involved in interpreting and presenting battlefield heritage for the Battlefields Trust and The Royal British Legion. My interest in battlefield touring was triggered by noticing that the part of Germany in which we were training in the 1980s had been a battlefield in 1757. I had always been interested in military history and both my father and grandfather had fought in the world wars.
As a guide, my clients include small and large groups, businesses as well as educational and military groups. I was an early supporter of the Guild of Battlefield Guides and been part of its validation team, responsible for assessing guides’ competence, since 2008. I instruct on courses teaching battlefield guides and have been Guide Co-ordinator for the Liberation Route Europe.
In 2012 I was elected to the British Commission for Military History. My published work includes two books on D Day and Normandy, chapters in British Army Guide to the Western Front, and articles in military history journals. I write a military history blog https://theobservationpost.com
My interest and knowledge of military history stretches from Caesar to the Cold War and my guiding experience covers much of Europe. Besides the world wars and the Napoleonic era, I am also interested in the mid C19th wars between Prussia, Austria and France and the Severn Years War.
Two of my books are on artillery in Normandy and I am currently writing a battlefield guide to artillery on the First Day of the Somme in publication. The artillery story of both world wars is a little neglected and I offer battlefield tours to tell the artillery story under the brand www.gunnertours.com
One speciality is providing military background for people researching their ancestry. I have been a researcher for a company that makes a popular ancestry-based TV programme and have appeared on television myself.
I have been privileged to support some of the British Army centenary staff rides as a subject matter expert alongside academic historians. My clients include many military units and headquarters. I run a website offering advice to military units planning staff rides, battlefield studies or realities of war tours. www.staffrideservices.com
The links between military and business strategy fascinate me. I offer a service to help organisations to learn from other people’s mistakes using examples from statecraft and military history. www.businessbattlefields.com
I chaired the Battlefields Trust from 2008-2015 and was involved in many projects to preserve, interpret and present many of the Battlefields of Britain, including the re-discovery of the battlefields of Bosworth.
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Christopher Finn
Accredited Guide Number: 42
Christopher Finn served in the RAF for 33 years as a navigator, primarily on the Buccaneer, and was a weapons and tactics specialist. As a Wing Commander he was the UK’s LGB specialist in AHQ Riyadh during Operation GRANBY. His final flying tour was as OC the Navigator & Airman Aircrew School. A graduate of the Joint Services’ Defence College, in 2000 he gained an MPhil in International Relations from Cambridge University. His last 5 years in the RAF were spent at Shrivenham, firstly on the Directing Staff of the Advanced Command and Staff Course and then, on promotion to Group Captain, as the RAF’s Director of Defence Studies. In this role he lectured extensively on air power to UK and international audiences, published articles on air power and ran the RAF’s staff ride programme.
On leaving the RAF in 2005 he spent ten years as a Senior Lecturer in Air Power Studies with Kings College London, later Portsmouth University, based at the RAF College Cranwell.
Since 2003 Chris has developed and led over 30 staff rides and battlefield tours covering the subjects and battles listed below. These have predominantly covered the influence of air power on the battlefield but also areas such as joint fires, logistics, command and control, intelligence, campaign planning, leadership at all levels and the political aspects of warfare. However, he has also covered maritime battles (Malta & NEPTUNE) and land battles (Monte Cassino & Berlin).
Chris also lectures on Military History to a wide range of audiences including, recently, a lecture on the role of the Royal Artillery in the Imjin River Battle of the Korean War.
He is a Fellow of both the Royal Aeronautical Society and the Higher Education Academy, and works as a volunteer Guide at the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight.
A member of the Guild since 2008, Chris gained his Badge in 2009, became the Chief Validator in 2015 and became the Director of Validation (now Accreditation Director) in 2017. He was elected the fourth Fellow of the Guild at the 2020 Annual Conference.
Tim Pritchard-Barrett
Accredited Guide Number: 71
Advance Battlefield Tours mission Statement is: To create and deliver – private, corporate & school tours which will entertain, educate, inform, teach, to even test individuals or groups of any size, tailored to any level of complexity, with any style of accommodation, over any length of time.
Our tours are delivered with care, great flexibility, knowledge, clarity, understanding, humour & unbridled enthusiasm for client needs & subject matter! Therefore we want you to “Smell that black powder & taste the cordite! “
Tim followed his family tradition and was commissioned into the Welsh Guards in 1974, where he served in every theatre upon which the regiment partook for nine years.
He has served for a total of 29 years. After the “regular” army Tim continued with the Territorial Army; – (similar to the US National Guard), in The Queens Own Yeomanry (A cavalry regiment in the role of deep penetration, armoured reconnaissance) up to the appointment of Squadron Leader but later as a staff officer, second in command and training officer for other regiments. His experiences in the military have included both operational command and staff appointments.
He been a member of the International Guild of Battlefield Guides since 2007, and holds Badge number 71. Widely experienced and well read, as a professional Battlefield Guide, Tim has led many dozens of tours across Western, Southern and Central Europe; (the majority, small business and personal tours) for 18 years.
New recent additions are the mystical secret Suffolk coast’s military heritage and the vast array of USAAF 8th Air Force Bases across East Anglia with the “Masters of the Air” Series having been on Apple TV.
All these tours have consistently reviewed Politics, Strategic aims, Operational Requirements, Ego, Command, Control, Intelligence (Gathering, Interpretation, Analysis & Dissemination), Leadership, Morale, Training, Weaponry, Logistics, Ground and Conditions. Most of all, to ensure a clarity of message and understanding to the tour participants, no matter their previous knowledge.
Always keen to research something new, Tim welcomes the challenge of conducting new tours, for forgotten wars, to unsung places.
Steve Smith
Accredited Guide Number: 17
I qualified as a Guild Guide in 2004, having left the RAF in 2003, where I served for 18 years as an RAF Police NCO at various bases in the UK and abroad and completed tours in Northern Ireland, the Falklands and in Macedonia on a NATO Peace Keeping mission. At present I assist students in attaining diplomas at various levels of education.
I have had an interest in military history since the age of 13 when I was introduced to my Great Grandfather Private G/5203 Frank Smith who served in the 7th and 8th Buffs in WW1 at the Pozieres Memorial on the Somme. Since then I have traced his war from 1915 to 1918 and now assist others in doing the same thing. It is both a passion and a calling to me.
I now work for Adaptable Travel where I am lucky enough to conduct battlefield tours with school groups and I also specialise in taking adult groups across as well. One of my main areas of focus is taking families on small battlefield pilgrimages to locate where their family members served. It is something I love doing.
I am an author having had two books on Norfolk in WW1 and WW2 published in 2012 and 2014 and I am currently working on my third book which will be about the Norfolk Regiment on the Western Front.
One of my other passions is the air war in both WW1 and WW2 and I conduct tours looking at aspects of these aerial battles. Living in Norfolk provides me with access to subjects such as the Zeppelin raids carried out over the county in 1915 and the Commonwealth and US bomber wars in WW2. I also love guiding the Battle of Britain having been brought up with stories of that time whilst growing up in East Kent.
I am comfortable guiding all aspects of WW1 and WW2 in Europe and revel in being provided with new challenges where I am offered the chance to study and walk the ground for specific unit actions.
As one gentleman said once said to me when I took him to see where his father had fought on the Western Front,
‘You helped to put the meat on the bones of my dad’s story.’