Battlefield Historians

Our Team of Battlefield Historians

Our team of battlefield historians and guides are selected for their experience, depth of knowledge, enthusiasm, and ability to tell the story in an entertaining and engaging way. Most are accredited members of the prestigious International Guild of Battlefield Guides, which means they endeavour to maintain high levels of good practice commensurate with the Guild’s ethos.

Ian Gumm

Ian is the cofounder of In The Footsteps, a full-time professional battlefield historian and guide, an accredited (badged) member of the International Guild of Battlefield Guides, a member of the Battlefields Trust, Society for Army Historical Research (SAHR), Western Front Association and Last Post Association. As a battlefield historian and retired Army officer, Ian is able to add a soldier's perspective to the tours he leads. Read more ...

David Hammond

As a former Commanding Officer of 7th Parachute Regiment Royal Horse Artillery, David has a practitioner's view on the conduct of military operations and the impact of the realities of war on its participants. A lifelong military history enthusiast, he is a graduate of the UK's first Advanced Command and Staff Course and holds a master's degree in military studies. Read more ...

Tony Smith

Tony worked full time in various sales and marketing roles until 2011 when he sold his business to pursue more of a 'portfolio' career including part time university lecturing, being the Membership Secretary of the International Guild of Battlefield Guides and leading off road Land Rover tours. He was proud to achieve accredited status in the Guild in November 2012 and now spends more time guiding across the battlefields. Read more ...

David Harvey

David began exploring battlefields, castles and other defensive sites as a teenager. These early interests became a lifelong passion in understanding the past through battles, as turning points in history and to qualifying as a badged member of the International Guild of Battlefield Guides. Read more ...

Dudley Giles

Dudley Giles spent 34 years in the British Army where, as a military police officer, he gained operational experience in Ulster, the Balkans, Afghanistan and, of course, the Cold War. He has held a wide variety of command, staff and international appointments (including a two-year exchange tour with the Canadian Army) and has served in every type of formation headquarters from brigade to 5 star (HQ SHAPE). Read more ...

Peter Smith

Peter is a member of the British Commission for Military History and the Western Front Association. His life has revolved around the Great War since he inherited his grandfather's medals and diary as a small boy. He grew up in East Yorkshire before joining the Territorial Army at 17. At 21 he decided he needed a little more action and joined the Royal Marines, a unit he served with for eleven years. Read more ...

Bob Darby

Bob Darby has been guiding battlefields tours for some twenty years and took early retirement from a successful financial services career to concentrate on his passion – battlefield guiding! He is an accredited guide of the International Guild of Battlefield Guides and the holder of Badge No 29, a mark of competence awarded to him by his peers. Read more ...

Jon Haslock

Jon's interest in the First World War was sparked as a young boy listening to the stories of veterans in his village. His interest in the military and the Great War increased and blossomed when he researched his own relative's actions and became fascinated by the part that they played. This fuelled his interest which subsequently turned into a passion. Read more ...

Jo Hook

Jo Hook entered the world of battlefield touring having as a youngster listened to her father's Second World War stories and her mother's memories of living through the blitz in London. She also conducted tours for military units when she served within the Royal Corps of Signals as a reservist for eighteen years. Read more ...

Robin Burrows-Ellis

Robin has always been passionate about history, archaeology, geography and travel. So naturally, being a battlefield guide is his ideal job. He started guiding whilst studying archaeology in the 1980s, conducting tours around various British archaeological sites of all periods. In 2009, Robin widened his guiding interests with town walks as a means of fundraising for charity. Read more ...

Paul Oldfield

Paul is a Badged Member of the International Guild of Battlefield Guides. He spent 36 years in the British Army, including operations in Ulster, the Balkans, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Iraq. He held a wide variety of regimental and staff appointments from the lowest tactical level to the highest headquarters. This background gives him an insight into all matters military from the political direction of operations down to the slit trench. Read more ...

Andy Johnson

Andy’s interest in military aviation and military history started many years ago and, by the age of 12, he knew that he was going to join the RAF. That dream was realised in 1981, when he joined the RAF and 17 of his 28 years’ service saw him on duty in the Boeing Sentry AWACS, with operational flying in the Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq conflicts. Andy left the RAF in 2009 and became a full-time Battlefield Guide. Read more ...

David Mathias

David is a retired Lieutenant Colonel with a lifetime of service in the Royal Navy and both the Regular and Territorial Armies. He has studied and visited battlefields throughout the world, and his present focus are the battlefields of the Second World War in NW Europe, and the Zulu and Second Anglo-Boer Wars in South Africa. He has led numerous battlefield tours, including a number to South Africa. Read more ...

John Cotterill

John has led tours to the battlefields of the American War of Independence, the Peninsular War, the Crimean War, the Great War, the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War. He is a member of the Western Front Association. He joined the Guild of Battlefield Guides in its infancy (Member Number 4) and was awarded Badge Number 10 in 2004. Read more ...

Eric Ratcliffe

In 1975 Eric learned to fly gliders and light aircraft at an old WW2 US Air Force Bomber base where he began to get an interest in the history of the Allied Air Operations during the Second World War. This interest focused on the bases around East Anglia close to where he lives and he subsequently became involved in escorting groups of veterans and their families around their old wartime haunts. Read more ...

Tim Stoneman

Tim Stoneman started life in the West Country and the area's maritime heritage obviously got into his bloodstream. He entered the Royal Navy in 1972 as a Seaman Officer and served at sea in a variety of ships from aircraft carriers to minesweepers (but not in submarines – at six foot five tall, he doesn't fit!) as a Fighter Controller and then as a Warfare Officer. Read more ...

Edwin Popken

Active in various areas of military history, Edwin is an all-round military historian who is fluent in Dutch and English and is also proficient in German. He specifically focuses on the events in Northwestern Europe in the time period September 1944 to March 1945, which can be summarised as the Rhine Campaign. Read more ...

Adrian Ridley-Jones

Adrian spent 16 years as a professional soldier in the British Army, both in the Infantry (Parachute Regiment) and then in the Royals Signals, serving mainly in Germany but also the Falklands. At the end of the Cold War, he joined a global company to utilise his technical skills, was Head of IT in a city organisation, a teacher and established and successfully ran his own company for 6 years. Read more ...

Susie Cooper

A passionate, hardworking, and diligent individual, Susie prides herself on her ability to get things done. A logical thinker, she can solve problems quickly and efficiently, whilst remaining professional, friendly, and approachable at all times. Unflappable, Susie remains calm in a crisis as evidenced by her actions at the scene of a road traffic accident in 2016 for which she was awarded a Commander Field Army’s commendation. Read more ...

In The Footsteps

5 Abbotts Close
Greytree
Ross-on-Wye
Herefordshire
HR9 7GQ
United Kingdom

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Phone: +44 (0) 1989 565599

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