Author Biographies for Bristol and the First World War

John Blake teaches history in a London comprehensive school, and has an interest in education policy. He is a Labour Party member and founder and one of two editors of Labour Teachers. He has written for the TES, LabourList, Progress and Shifting Grounds. Website: johndavidblake.org. Read his TES article 'The First Casuality: Truth'.

Charles Booth is Associate Professor in the Bristol Business School at the University of the West of England. His present research interests concern collective memory, and the processes and artefacts of commemoration. He is an advisor to the BBC for their ‘World War One at Home’ 2014 Centenary project, and he is acting as researcher and consultant to a number of local and regional organisations involved in centenary projects. With Kent Fedorowich, he is working on a project about emigrants from Bristol who enlisted in dominion forces during the First World War. He is a volunteer tour guide at Arnos Vale Cemetery.

Lucienne Boyce is a writer of fiction and non-fiction who was born in Wolverhampton and now lives in Bristol. Her historical novel, To The Fair Land (Silverwood Books, 2012) is an eighteenth-century thriller about a voyage of discovery which is set in London, Bristol and the South Seas. The Bristol Suffragettes (Silverwood Books, 2013) is a history of the suffragette campaign in Bristol and the south west which includes a pull-out map and walk. Lucienne is currently researching the impact of the First World War on the suffrage movement, and writing a historical novel about a Bow Street Runner who is also an amateur pugilist. Website: lucienneboyce.com.

Clive Burlton is an author, publisher and social historian. Following a corporate and consultancy career, in 2011 he wrote Trenches to Trams – The Life of a Bristol Tommy (Tangent Books). The story, about his wife’s grandfather, led him to discover that three of his own grandparents did their bit during the Great War. Stanley Barnes volunteered with ‘Bristol’s Own’, his wife Daisy was in the Land Army and Hermon Burlton served in the Royal Field Artillery. A volunteer at Bristol Record Office since 2008, Clive is a regular speaker at history and community groups across the city. He co-founded Bristol Books CIC in 2012 and he’s a non-executive director of Empica PR Ltd. He is co-author with Eugene Byrne of Bravo, Bristol! (Redcliffe Press, 2014). Read his online Bristol 2014 articles on: Bristol Adopts Bethune and 'Bravo, Bristol!'.

Eugene Byrne is a freelance journalist and author. He is currently also editor of the Bristol Times local history section of the Bristol Post. His previous books for Bristol Cultural Development Partnership include Isambard Kingdom Brunel: A Graphic Biography (2006) and The Bristol Story (2008), both with artist Simon Gurr. His other recent works on Bristol history include Unbuilt Bristol: The City that Might Have Been 1750-2050 (Redcliffe Press, 2013). He and Clive Burlton have written a social and military history of Bristol during the First World War, Bravo, Bristol!, which was published by Redcliffe Press in 2014. Visit his website at eugenebyrne.wordpress.com. Read his online article '“Germany, Austria and Drink” – Bristol’s War on Alcohol'. Eugene wrote Researching Your Bristolian Ancestors in the First World War: A Guide and the first 100 contributions for the Great War Stories Map and App.

Nigel Costley started work as an apprentice compositor – one of the last to be trained in ‘hot metal’. He was elected Father of the Chapel and spent 15 years in the role through the most turbulent times for printing and trade unionism. He particularly championed support for those out of work, including establishing a unique training cooperative. Having escaped school as soon as he could, Nigel returned to education on a part-time basis, eventually achieving a MSc with Leicester University. He became South West TUC Regional Secretary in 1996. He is the author of West Country Rebels.

Neil Faulkner is a freelance archaeologist and historian. He works as a writer, lecturer, excavator, and occasional broadcaster. He is currently a Research Fellow at the University of Bristol, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, the Editor of Military History Monthly, and a Lecturer for NADFAS. A leading First World War archaeologist, he co-directs the Great Arab Revolt Project in Jordan, and is author of the forthcoming Lawrence of Arabia’s War. He is also founder-director of the long-running Sedgeford Historical and Archaeological Research Project in Norfolk. Website: www.neilfaulkner.org.uk.

Dr Anna Farthing is Director of Harvest Heritage Arts and Media and a founding partner of Harvest Films Ltd. Following a decade as a freelance director in media and performance, Anna began using drama to engage audiences with heritage in 2004. Anna studied Drama at Bristol and Manchester Universities, where she gained her PhD in 2011. Anna was elected to the board of the International Museum Theatre Alliance in 2006 and served as Chair from 2009 to 2012. She is currently a director of the Bristol Shakespeare Festival and Bristol Festivals. She is a Visiting Fellow of Bristol University and an Associate of the Higher Education Academy, and the Research Associate for the Conservatoire for Dance and Drama. She is one of the artists commissioned for Bristol 2014.

Dr Kent Fedorowich is Reader in British Imperial History at UWE. The over-arching theme throughout all of his work to date has been a comparative approach and one that is permeated by the fascination with Anglo-dominion relations. As a Canadian who has lived in the UK for more than 30 years, he believes he can give a unique insight into this relationship. It has been this theme which has formed the backbone of his work whether it is empire migration, POW history, or more recently Anglo-Canadian wartime relations.

Sue Giles is Senior Curator of World Cultures at Bristol Museums, Galleries & Archives, responsible for the Militaria and Coins & Medals collections as well as the Ethnography,  Egyptology, and British Empire & Commonwealth Collections.  She read History at the University of Bristol and moved sideways to work in the museum next door. Her main interests lie in the Pacific and Central American collections of the museum, but works across much wider collections. She has helped create the Egyptology gallery, the Bristol & Transatlantic Slavery temporary and permanent exhibitions, the Moved by Conflict exhibition, and many temporary exhibitions. Publications as co-editor include The Art of Ruins: Adela Breton & the Temples of Mexico, 1989; Bristol & Transatlantic Slavery, 2000;  Horemkenesi, may he live for ever! The Bristol Mummy Project, 2002.

Professor Paul Gough is a painter, broadcaster and writer. He has exhibited widely in the UK and abroad, and is represented in the permanent collection of the Imperial War Museum, London, the Canadian War Museum, Ottawa, and the National War Memorial, New Zealand. His research into the imagery of war and peace has been presented to audiences throughout the world. He has published five books: a monograph on Stanley Spencer: Journey to Burghclere (Sansom & Co, 2006); A Terrible Beauty: British Artists in the First World War (2010); Your Loving Friend (Sansom & Co, 2011), the edited correspondence between Stanley Spencer and Desmond Chute; Banksy: the Bristol Legacy (editor, Redcliffe Press, 2012); and Brothers in Arms: John and Paul Nash (Sansom & Co, 2014). He has curated a number of exhibitions linked to the First World War in 2014. He is Pro Vice-Chancellor and Vice-President at RMIT, Melbourne, Australia. Read his online articles 'Why Paint War? Art, British Artists and the First World War' and 'Dread Fascination’: Artists and War'. He is presented a lecture on Paul Nash and Stanley Spencer at the Wills Memorial Building on  11 November 2014.

Patrick Hassell is a retired engineer who has worked for Handley Page, British Aircraft Corporation (on Concorde), Douglas and Saab, mostly on aircraft performance and flight testing. He was Business Development Manager for Dowty Propellers but retired early to follow his interests in aviation history and served a term as a Bristol City Councillor. He is Vice-Chairman of the Rolls-Royce Heritage Trust in Bristol. Read his online article 'The Blimps – Anti-Submarine Airships with Engines from Bristol'.

Peter Insole is a Senior Archaeological Officer in the City Design Group at Bristol City Council with responsibility for managing the Bristol Historic Environment Record. During 2010-11 he managed the English Heritage funded project to create Know Your Place, an online geographic information system (GIS). In 2013, through his company Local Learning, he secured Heritage Lottery funding for a community heritage project to explore the history of the Shirehampton Remount Depot. This culminated in the creation of Avonmouth Primary School’s play Their Lives Beneath Our Feet and the BBC documentary The Equine War. Visit the Great War Stories map layer, specially created for Bristol 2014.

Alys Jones graduated from the BA Honours Illustration course in Falmouth in 2006, and completed her MA in Illustration: Authorial Practice, also in Falmouth. Her MA project focused on the generation of visual responses to First World War literature. This became combined with an exploration of Meta-fictional narratives, culminating in the production of her book Beyond the Wire which was jointly awarded the 2011 Graphic Literature Prize by Atlantic Press. She has worked on commissions for Daunt Books, Truro Arts Company and Falmouth Art Gallery, as well as continuing to develop her own projects. Website:alystration.wordpress.com. She is one of the artists commissioned for Bristol 2014 who spoke at the First World War Day event at Watershed on 15 November 2014.

Melanie Kelly is seconded from Business West to Bristol Cultural Development Partnership as Research Director and Project Manager. Her publications include Brunel: In Love with the Impossible (co-editor and author, for Brunel 200), Darwin: For the Love of Science (co-editor and author, for Darwin 200 and linked to The Lost World Read project), and Take Flight: Celebrating Aviation in the West of England Since 1910 (co-author, part of BAC 100). She has co-ordinated and written support material and children’s editions of books for the Great Reading Adventure since 2003 (including The Siege in 2005 and Small Island in 2007). She has also written on managing partnerships and making cities legible.

Helen McConnell Simpson is Collections Officer for Public History at Bristol Museums, Galleries & Archives. Based between M Shed and Blaise Castle House Museum, she helps to care for and make accessible a large collection of domestic and social history objects. Prior to this, Helen completed the HLF-funded Skills for the Future programme as Social History Curatorial Trainee at the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Coventry. She has an MA in Museum Studies from Newcastle University and previously managed funding awards to museums and galleries at the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Helen is a trustee of the Social History Curators Group and Editor of its Journal.

Dr Nick Nourse is a postdoctoral research assistant at the University of Bristol. He has participated in a series of public engagement projects including working with his co-author Pete Insole on the history of the Shirehampton Remount Depot; his research has been used in the BBC documentary The Equine War and he is writing an account of the depot for publication. His subject specialisms include social history, cartography and GIS, musicology and popular music of the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Dr Sarah Whittingham FSA is a writer and lecturer whose books include: Wills Memorial Building (Bristol: University of Bristol, 2003); The University of Bristol: A History (Bristol: University of Bristol, 2009); The Victorian Fern Craze (Oxford: Shire Books, 2009); Sir George Oatley: Architect of Bristol (Bristol: Redcliffe Press, 2011); Fern Fever: The Story of Pteridomania (London: Frances Lincoln, 2012), and Remembering and Forgetting: Three Sisters and the Great War (forthcoming). Website: www.sarahwhittingham.co.uk.