My fascination with family history, particularly that of those who served in one of the armed forces, started over four decades ago with the discovery of a bag of sepia photos inherited from my great aunt.

That inspired me to embark on my first project - to discover who those young men in uniform were and what had happened to them.  Follow their stories in my talk 'Home is Where the Heart Is' and discover more about the times in which they lived  in  'Hear All About It!'.

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My interest in military history took me through service in the Royal Air Force, via retraining in Family and Community History (thanks to the OU), membership of a family history society (lots of days spent in overgrown churchyards recording memorial inscriptions!) to a professional role at the Imperial War Museums.

I worked on a number of international projects, commemorating key anniversaries of both the First and Second World Wars. The museum's collections provide fascinating original materials which I used to help inspire and engage groups of young people, exploring cemeteries, battlefields and historic sites across Europe and beyond.We Will Remember Them'  features men, women and children whose lives were impacted by the conflicts.

​As genealogy lead during the Centenary of the First World War , I worked with archives and providers to make more historic records publicly available, was one of the keynote speakers at Who Do You Think You Are? Live  2014  and met amazing people from across the UK with the BBC's World War 1 At Home tour, helping them get started with their own research. ​'The Happy Warrior'  and  'The Boxing Clergyman'  are two of the people whose stories I discovered.

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More recently I led the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s Commemorations team. More than a century after the Armistice, the CWGC Recovery Team are still finding casualties on the former battlefields and I'm proud of my contribution to the efforts to identify them,  and in arranging their dignified reburial in the peaceful cemeteries of the Western Front and far beyond.  The process of identification has always been challenging, and I've managed the complex investigations of many of those buried as soldiers 'Known Unto God' who might now be named through exhaustive desktop research. 

I love the detective work needed to solve a mystery - you need to be tenacious, thorough and constantly questioning the evidence! Accuracy is everything - following  a false trail makes your subsequent results invalid, so it's critical to keep cross checking your evidence.

Engaging with audiences, encouraging them to delve into the past and sharing their enthusiasm as they make their own journey of discovery is really rewarding.