Why We Do What We Do
On the 19th – 21st March this year I was privileged to be asked by Anglia Tours to conduct a battlefield tour of Ypres and the Somme for a small family group. The lead passenger’s daughter had missed …
A Family at War – Ashley Clark
Sergeant Fred CLARK 1st Battalion Northamptonshire Regiment- a family at war
Fred CLARK was one of 7 sons and 2 daughters born to George and Lucy CLARK of Peterborough. The brothers in age order were George, Charles, Fred, John, …
Perrins Community School – The Benefits of a Guided History Tour
Perrins Community School, a secondary school in Hampshire, have a long tradition of self-guided WW1 Battlefield tours. However this year Mike Jewell decided to try something different and, for the first time, booked a guided history tour.
The tour to …
The Formation of the Hawthorn Ridge Crater Association
Twelve months ago Hawthorn Crater, filmed by the army cinematographer Geoffrey Malins on the morning of 1st July 1916 and seen in virtually every documentary about the Great War, was rubbish filled and inaccessible. Thanks to the work of the …
Female agents of the Second World War
Chosen to work in a secretive, clandestine and mainly male domain, the women of the Special Operations Executive, French section (SOE F) were all truly remarkable. From house wives to grandmothers, shop assistants to princesses, thirty nine women passed through …
An Anglian Journey – A female perspective on Battlefield Guiding
I was always interested in history whilst I was at school. In fact, it was the subject to which I was most attracted. This interest quickly turned towards one particular aspect – modern military history. I have been interested in …
Vera Brittain – A short appreciation
By the time Vera Brittain’s Great War memoir Testament of Youth was published in 1933 the road towards a second and yet more devastating world war was already being mapped out. In the years that followed publication, before Chamberlain’s famous …
A young woman at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst
In my own small way, I was involved in a ‘first’ for women. I and some 40 other young women lived and trained in the hallowed portals of Old College at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst as the first female …