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Richard Burgess is an experienced battlefield guide, educator and social historian with many years’ experience designing and leading educational tours across the United Kingdom and Europe. He is an Accredited Member of the International Guild of Battlefield Guides (Guide No. 83) and is also accredited and licensed to guide groups at the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp Memorial in Germany, where he provides historically informed and sensitive interpretation of the site, its victims and its place within the wider history of Nazi persecution and the Holocaust.

His principal areas of interest include the First and Second World Wars, the Holocaust, the Cold War, genocide studies and the relationship between faith, conflict and the human experience. His wider historical work encompasses Victorian crime and punishment, criminology and the development of criminal investigation.

What particularly distinguishes Richard’s approach to battlefield guiding is his professional background as a former Nationally Accredited Intelligence Officer and Detective Sergeant. Drawing upon those investigative skills, together with his work as an educator and social historian, he approaches history through evidence: examining sources, questioning assumptions, testing accepted narratives and encouraging those he guides to consider not simply what happened, but how we know.

Over the years, Richard has led hundreds of educational visits for schools, colleges, churches and adult groups. Qualified in Christian Studies, he also continues to develop his professional practice in education and training, with particular emphasis upon inclusion, accessibility and meaningful engagement.

Richard founded the Essex Police Military History Club and was instrumental in securing a permanent memorial on the Somme commemorating Essex Police personnel who lost their lives during the First World War. Unveiled during the centenary commemorations in 2016, the memorial remains a lasting tribute to their service and sacrifice.

For Richard, battlefield guiding is about far more than dates, places and military events. At its heart are people: the decisions they made, the circumstances in which they made them, the consequences that followed and the lives forever changed by conflict.

His aim is to bring people into meaningful contact with the past — to examine the evidence, walk the ground and understand the human stories behind the history — encouraging those he guides to question, understand, reflect and remember.

My interest in military aviation and military history started many years ago and, by the age of 12, I knew that I was going to join the RAF; this dream was realised in 1981. My RAF experience included 17 years on the Boeing Sentry AWACS, with operational flying in the Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts.

I left the RAF in 2009 to become a full-time Battlefield Guide. I completed the International Guild of Battlefield Guides validation programme in November 2011 and hold Badge No 52.

I visit Second World War battlefields, with a particular interest in Normandy, including the D-Day beaches, the airborne operations, and the frequently neglected fighting inland, which led to the crossing of the Seine in late August 1944. I also visit the campaigns across Northwest Europe to the 1945 battles on and across the Rhine. I have also led tours to Salerno, Cassino and Crete.

Having spent so long in the air environment, I have a huge interest in the air war and I have led tours to sites related to the Great War in the air, Fighter Command, the Combined Bomber Offensive and the German secret weapons programmes.

An interest in the Air War naturally leads to the subject of National Socialist Germany. I have taken groups to many sites in Hitler’s Germany, from the development and deployment of the V-Weapons, through the concentration camp and forced labour systems to the Final Solution. It is a difficult but important subject.

And Germany, of course, leads to an interest in Berlin. I never served in Berlin – but I am an old Cold Warrior!

For most of my adult life, I have been a traveller and my favourite locations are those where major historical events have taken place. I have travelled widely in India and this led to a deep interest in the history of Great Britain’s involvement in that country. I have led groups looking at the story of the Indian Corps on the Western Front.

I was born and brought up in Jersey, Channel Islands and from an early age became passionate about its history as well as military history generally.

One of my grandfathers had wartime service with the Canadian Infantry on the Western Front in WW1 and the other was a career soldier with the Royal Army Service Corps from the 1920s to 1950. My paternal great-grandfather had also served with the Royal Garrison Artillery for 21 years including the whole of WW1 on the Western Front. My father, whilst not joining up, did an apprenticeship at the Royal Woolwich Arsenal in the 1950s, a very interesting time in post war weapons systems development. It is hardly surprising that military history would help form my interests and I even contemplated a military career myself. However, that didn’t happen, and I followed a career as a lawyer for 35 years.

I got into guiding accidentally as a result of our law firm entertaining some visiting conference lawyers on a coach tour. I thought that the “pre-taped” commentary was so bad that I grabbed the microphone and gave my first guided tour! I was hooked and did tours whenever I could and upon retirement from my legal career, I set up my guiding business and at the same time became a licensed public service vehicle driver so I could legally undertake driver-guiding.

I focus on providing personal service for small groups as a driver-guide, although I am happy to guide larger parties. I believe in providing a complete experience to my clients to help them get the best of their exploration of a battlefield and the local environment. I love drawing in other aspects of history, as well as introducing disciplines like archaeology and geology to better understand the topography.

Most of my guiding is in the Channel Islands, which have an incredible history of battles, military history and fortifications extending as far back as at least the Iron Age, then all the way to WW2, when the Islands were the only part of the British Isles to be occupied by Nazi German forces for 5 years. However, I also guide elsewhere in Europe, particularly in France which is only about 15 miles away at its closest and which I can see from my garden!

I particularly enjoy the educational element of battlefield guiding – be it for individual clients, a class of school children or a military unit undertaking battlefield study exercises for visiting military units. My mother was a teacher, so I suppose that is where I get that from!

Finally, whilst not yet published, my research will hopefully result in books on the Hundred Years’ War in the Channel Islands; an answer to why the Channel Islands become some of the most heavily Nazi fortified places in Europe; and the life story of an extraordinary pair of sisters who served on the Western Front as F.A.N.Y.s in WW1 and then as senior officers working with the S.O.E. in WW2!