Find a Guide

Simon has been interested in military history since he was a child. He first visited the battlefields on family holidays and soon became fascinated with D Day and the Normandy campaign. In his teens he developed an interest in the First World War and led his first guided tours to the former battlefields of the Western Front while still at university. After graduating with a history degree, he went on to train as a teacher and for 15 years ran annual school tours to the Western Front.

From 2014, Simon ran the prestigious and multi award-winning First World War Centenary Battlefield Tours Programme – a UK government funded initiative which saw 8,500 students and teachers visit the former battlefields of the Western Front. Simon led more than 90 of these tours and as the programme’s lead for on-site education became an internationally recognised expert in leading students and teachers on the battlefields. He has also led tours for adult organisations including universities. Simon also has a passion for historical research and is able to bring the battlefields to life with personal stories, while also placing these stories in the immediate and wider historical context.

Simon is a member of the British Commission for Military History and the Western Front Association.

Simon is a serving Army officer and qualified as a badged guide in May 2020.

He originally served in the Royal Air Force before leaving to pursue a career in the oil industry, and also serving as a reserve officer. Rather to his surprise he ended up joining the Regular Army 7 years ago.

Simon has served on operations in Gulf War 1, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Iraq (where he ran Basrah Fire Brigade) and twice as an aviation planner in Afghanistan (including with the US Marine Corps).

He has served as the Operations Officer in the Attack Helicopter Force HQ and is currently the aviation specialist in the Collective Training Group at the Land Warfare Centre. He delivers training to brigade and division HQs particularly in the use of aviation and air land integration.

Simon has been visiting the battlefields for several years and has led a number of small group tours.

He is particularly interested in Normandy in WW2 and in all aspects of air power in WW2 and WW1.

He is also passionate about the American Civil War particularly Gettysburg and the Eastern theatre battles.

Gareth has been a keen student of twentieth century warfare for many years. He served in the Royal
Tank Regiment for over 25 years and his military career included tours teaching at Sandhurst, the Land Warfare School, and the Joint Services Command and Staff College, as well as two tours in the
Ministry of Defence. He has an MA in Defence Studies from Kings College London.

Gareth now works as a Warfare Analyst, looking at current military challenges as well as helping people
learn from the past. He regularly leads group tours for schools and military units as well as highly
bespoke tours for individuals and families. His interests include command, learning, and technology;
the Great War in France & Flanders, Italy, and Palestine; Second World War combined arms actions of
1944 and 1945; and tanks – because a day without a tank is a day wasted. His first book, on tanks in
1917, will be published by Helion in 2021.

David Harrison served in the British Army for more 30 years. He has studied extensively the
Italian campaigns of the First and Second World War from his house in the Le Marche region
of Italy. You may wish to take a group to learn about the British involvement in the First
World Campaign in the north of Italy. British involvement was a consequence of the Battle of
Caporetto, and resulted with fighting on the Asiago Plateau and along the River Piave,
before the campaign was concluded at the Battle of Vittorio Veneto. Alternatively, you may
want to follow a relative’s involvement in the Allied Second World Campaign on Sicily, at
Salerno/Monte Cassino/Anzio, or against the Gothic Line.

David is able to provide a personal package to meet your specific needs. His NATO assignments resulted in close working relationships with colleagues from the main participants in the Italian campaigns (Canada, Germany, Italy, Poland and USA), and with his operational experience in Northern Ireland,
the Balkans and Afghanistan he is able to provide rare insights into the battles. He received his accreditation (Badge 103) from the Guild in January 2020.

Alison initially came to military history by way a grandfather who had served in the First World War and through studying the War poets. 

Although she did not set out to have a military career, Alison joined the Officers Training Corps whilst at university studying English and French.  She subsequently joined the Regular Army and served for 28 years, retiring in the rank of Colonel. She served in various places in UK, including Northern Ireland, and also spent over two years in Hong Kong.  She held a variety of appointments, both Regimental and on the Staff, including four Staff appointments to the Ministry of Defence. 

Whilst in Hong Kong, in 1985 she took part in a Battlefield Tour commemorating the fortieth anniversary of VJ Day which sparked her interest in Battlefield Touring.  On leaving the Army, she completed a part-time MA Course in Military Studies and began working as a freelance Battlefield Guide for Galina, based in Chester, guiding a variety of clients on coach tours: school, military, veterans’ and adult groups.  She subsequently moved companies, joining Poppy Travel, which was then the Battlefield Tour arm of the Royal British Legion, and guiding “Realities of War’ tours for soldiers under training to Belgium, France and Normandy.

She joined the Guild of Battlefield Guides in 2005 and gained Accreditation in 2007, the first female guide to do so.  She then took on the role of Validation Secretary for eight years.

Alison decided to continue her studies and has since completed a PhD at the University of Birmingham on the replacement of casualties during the First World War.  This led to the publication of her first book ‘Refilling Haig’s Armies’, which was awarded third place in the Society for Army Historical Research competition for the best first book published in 2018.  She is continuing to research divisions in the Hundred Days, with a view to publication.

Alison now limits her guiding activities to her local Western Front Association but is happy to advise and carry out research for anyone who cares to contact her.

I just love understanding battlefields; their context, their geography, their nuances, their consequences and of course the people who were involved. How those potentially uncharted elements such as human character, climate, technology and fate made a difference. Somewhere in that mix is found an incredible story that defines the human condition in its most testing circumstances. Some failed and some succeeded and were honoured; some missed the umpire’s eye and went unrecognised. Some only knew their own 10 yard horizon and some left us the most telling descriptions of their battle experience; for example Private Louis Canler’s account of advancing with the 28^th de Ligne in D’Erlon’s I Corps at Waterloo. I am just the person who for a small period of time has the honour to tell those stories with the benefit of hindsight; to engage, to draw empathy, to perhaps even send my customers home thinking differently. That to me is what historians in general, and battlefield guides in particular. should do – to use evidence to offer people the chance to see history in a different way, to challenge ‘lazy history’ and perhaps to allow people the room to think and perhaps change perceptions. Finally, I see battlefield visits as a shared social experience with customers and there is only one certainty – that somebody will add a strand of information or thought that will add to my knowledge; no battlefield guide knows everything! Some of my best tours have been with knowledgeable customers who have challenged, opined and engaged in debate which has proved to be stimulating for the whole group. Battlefield Guides should not be peddlers of history, but interpreters of events who listen and expand the tour experience. You can read about battles in your study but you cannot better understand them until you have been on the ground.

I am a serving Army officer and qualified as a badged guide in May 2020.  I have served with the Household Cavalry both operationally and as a mounted cavalryman on state ceremonial and public duties, as well as working on the staff in the wider Army.  Military experience of the Middle East, Balkans and Afghanistan.

I have been visiting battlefields for many years and have led a number of small group tours, for military personnel, veterans and members of the general public.  Very interested in all matters involving the cavalry where I like to think I have a unique insight, as well as armoured operations where I also have significant practical knowledge.  I continue to develop and learn my craft, and I am currently studying for an MA in the History of Great Britain and the First World War.

Brian Shaw is an Ex Warrant Officer in the Parachute Regiment who has been leading
battlefield tours for the past twenty years. Born in Nottingham in 1958 he joined the Army in
1974 as a Junior Soldier, progressing through a busy career specializing in Battlefield
Communications. Brian become a Warrant Officer Class 1 in 1995 and retired from the
Army in January 2013 after 38 years’ service.

Brian has had an extensive career serving across the globe, in Northern Ireland on operations
and from South Africa to the Arctic Circle and from California to Hong Kong, the long way
round, on training. This long Infantry experience and knowledge of tactics, give him a
soldier’s eye for ground and the implications of terrain on the weapon systems of any
chosen period.

Brian has a long-held interest in military history, particularly the Second World War. He
combines his own experiences and his knowledge of history to put his audience on a tour
within the experience of what the soldiers of the day saw, felt and experienced.
Whilst Brian’s passion is for the Second World War and specifically NW Europe 1944/45
(D–Day to the war’s end) but with a wide military history knowledge he is happy working with
groups on the battlefields of the Great War or others.

Brian has assisted in and personally planned and led tours on the Battle of Waterloo, The
Western Front, Gallipoli, France and Belgium 1940, Malta, the fighting in Normandy,
Operation Market–Garden, Aachen, the Hurtgen Forest, the Rhine Crossing (Plunder and
Varsity) and the Ardennes Offensive. Italy – Anzio and Cassino.

Robert Shaw is an accredited Battlefield tour guide and has written military history books on the SAS, SOE and the Cold War. He retired from the British Army after a career spanning over 25 years where he worked in the fields of IEDD, logistics and intelligence, working for UKSF and DIS. He subsequently managed training for the UN and NATO in Afghanistan, Libya, Ukraine, Nigeria and Somalia. His battlefield tour expertise and experience includes the American Civil War, WW1, WW2 and the Cold War in UK, USA, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Sicily, Crete, the Baltic States, Ukraine, Poland and the Balkans. Robert has a Master’s degree in Global Security from Cranfield University and lectures at UCL on intelligence and defence matters and counter proliferation.