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Graeme has been battlefield guiding since 1995. He operates ‘Cooper’s Waterloo Tours’, a family run Essex based business specialising in tailored tours to the Napoleonic Campaign battlefields of the Peninsular War and Waterloo. A Fellow of the International Napoleonic Society (FINS), Graeme qualified as a Waterloo Campaign Guide with Les Guides 1815 in 1998.

Graeme’s interest in the Napoleonic Campaigns was sparked during his time as a cadet at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst by his tutors, the late and renowned military historians and authors, Professor Richard Holmes and Dr David Chandler. Graeme’s ancestor John Cooper fought at Waterloo in the 7th Hussars. In WW2 Graeme’s father Johnny Cooper was one of David Stirling’s originals in ‘L’ Detachment SAS.

Graeme was the driving force behind the creation of the International Guild of Battlefield Guides in November 2002. Since his original idea, the Guild has grown to International status and has set the benchmark for many who have passed its quality validation programme. Graeme was the Guild Secretary until November 2009 when he became the first member to be elected to the Guild’s Roll of Honour for his services to the Guild and the craft.

In May 2006 he established Corporate Battlefields Ltd, a leadership training company for corporate management and has since delivered to senior global management teams from eBay, Boeing UK, London Fire Brigade, Lilly, Brother UK, HSBC, Parliamentarians, the NATO Secretary General and others on the battlefields of Waterloo, Salamanca, Isandlwana, Normandy D-Day Beaches and Naseby. In 2025 the company found a new home with a fellow Guild member.

Graeme is a member of the Battlefields Trust and Waterloo Association. He and his wife live in Essex. Graeme enjoys golf, photography, dog walking and chess.

His pictorial presentations and talks are all listed on SPEAKERNET

“Graeme Cooper is the master story-teller. You stand with him in a green field, but when he speaks you see a battlefield before you.” – Adam Holloway MP

Dudley Giles has been an active battlefield guide for over 25 years and was an early member of the Guild of Battlefield Guides.

A former British Army officer, Dudley managed, in a career spanning nearly 34 years, to serve a third of his time in North West Europe (Germany and Belgium), a third in the UK (including three residential tours in Northern Ireland) and a third in ‘exotic’ locations such as Afghanistan, Bosnia, Canada, Croatia, Kosovo and the flanks of NATO (Norway and Turkey). In 1990 he attended the Army Command and Staff Course, and, in 2001, was serving as NATO’s senior military police officer during the climactic events post 9/11. In 2006/7 he deployed to Afghanistan as General Richards’ senior police advisor and his last appointment in the Army before finally retiring in 2012 he was Deputy Provost Marshal (Army).

In 2006/7 Dudley found himself on the modern battlefields of Afghanistan and was able to help soldiers, diplomats and journalists understand the historical similarities between the present and past experience of British soldiers in that country. On his return he acted as the chief battlefield guide for the very first Help for Heroes Big Battlefield Bike Ride and continued to support the charity in that capacity until 2013. This experience eventually led him to set up a specialist touring company -‘Battlefields by Bike.

Dudley took his first degree in Law (LL.B (Hons) at the University of Leeds in 1979 and later a Masters Degree in British First World Studies (2010) – graduating with Distinction.

When not running his own tours or carrying out research, Dudley works as an independent contractor for schools, military groups, families and other battlefield touring companies.

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 8^th 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.

Tim has guided tours to battlefields and Remembrance sites since 2008, leading schools parties, groups of veterans, serving military and the general public.

Before this he served in the Royal Navy for 35 years as a Gunnery and Air Defence Officer. This included service at sea in the Falklands and in the First Gulf War, as well as deployments afloat to many other parts of the world, and shore postings working with colleagues from the British Army, Royal Air Force and other nations. During his naval career, his life-long interest in naval history led him to take part in several battlefield studies, initially as the maritime expert, and subsequently broadening his interests to encompass land and air campaigns of the 20th Century.

Whilst preferring to look at battlefields with a nautical or amphibious flavour, such as Gallipoli, Dunkirk or Normandy, he is equally at home guiding on the Somme, in Flanders or other land-locked regions.

He is a Westcountryman by birth, with, perhaps not surprisingly, something of a maritime interest from an early age. After many years in Portsmouth, enjoying living near a major focus of the nation’s naval heritage, he has recently returned to his Devonshire roots. He joined the Guild in 2008, was awarded his Badge in 2014 and became the Guild’s Validation Secretary in 2015, a role he relinquished in 2020 when he joined the Management Board and was appointed as Guild Secretary.