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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.

Originally commissioned into The Gordon Highlanders, I served for twenty years as an infantry officer in the British Army. This included tours at regimental duty as a rifle platoon and close reconnaissance platoon commander, adjutant and company commander. I have also served as an aide de-camp, infantry tactics adviser to the Kuwaiti Army, close reconnaissance instructor at the Land Warfare Centre and a staff officer at brigade and divisional levels.

As a civilian, I have worked in West Africa as a security sector reform consultant to the UN; then as a humanitarian programme manager and operations director reducing the negative impacts of rogue ex-combatant groups small arms, ammunition and unexploded ordnance in conflict-prone communities.

My military service, including operational tours in Northern Ireland, Iraq, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and my time working in Africa has given me a solid grounding in the theory and conduct of military operations and the impact of war. I have a Masters degree in Military Strategic Studies and I am a graduate of the Italian Joint Forces Higher Command and Staff College. I bring this experience with a lifelong interest in military history to my battlefield tours, offering clients a coherent strategic, operational and tactical perspective. I work hard to ensure that the memory of those who fought is properly honoured and respected.

I am a fluent Italian speaker and can get by at colloquial level in German which helps considerably with tour management.

I am accredited with the International Guild of Battlefield Guides and work as a freelance guide for a number of companies, including Staffride, Albatross Tours, Galloway Travel and Battle Honours. This means that I work with adult groups, schools and military units. I also work privately for individuals, families and groups to deliver bespoke tours in Italy, France, Belgium and Berlin.

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.