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In
Brief
Tonie
and Valmai Holt have been writing since
they were at school. Tonie Holt joined
the British Army, graduated from the Royal
Military Academy at Sandhurst and took
a degree in Engineering. Valmai Holt studied
at London University, graduated in French
and Spanish and later taught History.
They married in 1957. In the 1970s they founded Major and Mrs Holt's Battlefield Tours, the first organisation that offered such tours to the General Public. Later they re-organised and ran the Royal British Legion Pilgrimages. They are now full-time authors & have two children,
Sian and Gareth, both of whom helped conduct
battlefield tours and have two grandchildren,
Jessica and Rebecca, both committed
to the cause of Remembrance. |
Tonie
and Valmai with some of the 30 books that
they have written |
The
Army
Following an army career of almost 20 years
including graduation from the Army Staff College
at Camberley and Technical Staff College at
Shrivenham, Tonie Holt resigned his commission
and he and Valmai became self-employed, starting
a number of ventures. Writing continued.
The
Beginning of Battlefield Tours
In 1977 one of their books, Till the Boys
Come Home which looked at the First World
War through its contemporary postcards, was
highly praised by the London Times and
was taken as a major choice by the Military
Book Society.
Over lunch with the Managing Director of the
Society the idea came up of running a tour for
Society members to the battlefields of the First
and Second World Wars and the Holts were appointed
Military Consultants to the Society to carry
out the idea. This the Holts did and so was
born Major and Mrs Holts
Battlefield Tours. At this time no other
battlefield tour company existed, thus the Holts
created a completely new industry with a company
that went on to become the world leader in such
travels, visiting countries as far afield as
Viet Nam, the Falkland Islands, Egypt, India,
China, Russia and the United States as well
as sites all around Europe. They devised their
own ‘time capsule’ method of presenting the
battlefields with the imaginative use of sound
recordings, contemporary material, poetry, letters,
despatches etc. combined with solid research
and extensive ‘recces’ on the ground. Thorough
guide training was an important plank in their
philosophy and the tours were renowned for their
high standards of scholarship and comfort. En
route to this development they were appointed
Military Tours Consultants to British Airways
as well as Military Consultants to the City
of Portsmouth following their suggestion that
a D Day Museum be established in the City.
The
Royal British Legion
In
the 1980s they were asked by the Royal British
Legion to take over the running of Pilgrimages.
This they did completely revising and updating
the arrangements until the Pilgrimages were
taken back under the Legion's wing when the
Government re-instated financial help for family
visits to loved-one's graves. In 1984, under
the title "Reunion '84' they instigated
and organised the first of the major re-unions
associated with the events of D Day.
Battlefield
Guide Books
At the beginning of the ‘90s the Holts sold
their company in order to concentrate upon more
writing and embarked upon a series of guide
books that incorporated all that they had learned
from conducting thousands of people around battlefields.
This series, Major and
Mrs Holts Battlefield Guide to …, incorporates
detailed travel directions, military history
and fascinating anecdotes collected over a quarter
of a century. The books are designed as companions
for travellers whether sitting at home or physically
visiting the battlefields and are written from
a male and female point of view, thus they are
not all explosions and gun calibres but encompass
the human element of war plus the literature
and poetry too. The Holts, who share the writing
of their books equally, do all their own research,
an aspect which they particularly enjoy, spending
many weeks on the ground as they prepare each
new book.
Battlefield
Maps
Uniquely the Holts also design and produce large
scale battlefield maps to accompany the
books. These maps accurately locate memorials,
museums, cemeteries and places where particular
actions took place. Printed in four colours
there are colour-coded indexes making the maps
easy to use and all the stops suggested in the
guide books are given map references to the
Holts’ map.
Established Battlefield Guide Books
The major 'single battlefield' guide books written
so far are – Normandy
D -Day Landing Beaches,
Operation Market Garden, Arnhem, the
Somme, Ypres
and Gallipoli.
The Somme and Ypres guide books are already
in their sixth editons and are updated each
time.
Recent Works
These include Major
and Mrs Holt’s Concise Illustrated Guide to
the Western Front in two parts –
North and then South. North
was published in 2003 and South
in 2005 and between them they cover some 29
battles of the First World War. However many
people asked for small volumes to use on short
visits to the Somme and Ypres and in 2005 and
2006 Major and
Mrs Holt's Pocket Guides to
the Somme and to Ypres were published.
In 2014 a much enlarged Western Front - North including GPS references for all locations was published and similarly their 'Defintive Guide to the Normandy D-Day Landing Beache's with some 500 described locations all with GPS was also published in 2014. Completing a trio of books for that year was an updated version of 'Till the Boys Come Home'.
Current
Activities
At
the moment they are working on the 7th edition
of their guide book to the Somme and it will follow the others in that it too will include GPS references for all of the locations covered. All the books require a
great deal of travelling and research on their
part as they do not use researchers and also
take their own photographs.
Some Other Qualifications and Experience
The Holts are Fellows of the Royal Society Of
Arts, were long-time members of the Institute
of Travel & Tourism, Members of the Kipling
Society, have lectured extensively (e.g. at
the National Army Museum, the V & A, the
Cloth Hall in Ypres, the Historial at Péronne,
numerous WFA Branches etc) and have often appeared
on TV and radio talking about their books (such
as their controversial book on John Kipling
or the poetry of WW1) their unique collection
of Bairnsfatherware and their tours. In recognition
of their pioneer work in the field of battlefield
guiding they have been created two of only four
original Honorary Members of the Guild of Battlefield
Guides (the late David Chandler and Donald
Featherstone being the other two). They are
Honorary Citizens of Slidell, New Orleans (for
their work in tourism in the area) and of Comines-Warneton,
Belgium (for their work in honouring Bruce Bairnsfather).
They were appointed members of the Honorable
Order of Kentucky Colonels by the State Governor
of Louisiana and were made Aide de Camps to
Congressman Robert E Livingston in recognition
of their studies of US operations in Normandy
in WW2. Most of all they are proud grandparents.
They write their books because they feel that the memories of what happened and the markers on the battlefields need to be remembered and that determination was generously recognised by the Departement of the Somme who in 2014 presented each of them them with the Somme Centenary Medal - they were the only British awards, the others went to two French one German and one American recipients.
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