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Members of the Centre:: Simon
Jones
Since February 2004 Simon Jones has been a freelance
historian and battlefield tour guide. He was formerly a museum curator, with
sixteen years’ experience specialising in military collections. This was
initially as Assistant Curator and Exhibitions Officer of the Royal Engineers
Museum at Chatham from 1987 until 1993, during which time he became an
acknowledged authority on military engineering, especially tunnelling and mining
on the Western Front in the Great War. He was responsible for setting up the
Nineteenth Century and First World War permanent galleries and for researching
the Second World War and Post-War galleries. He organised the video recording of
the deep mining system on Vimy Ridge during 1989-90.
From 1994 to 2003 he was Curator of the King’s Regiment at
the Museum of Liverpool Life, where he was responsible for acquisitions,
collections management and research of the King’s Regimental Museum collection
on behalf of the King’s Regiment, and Acting Head of the Museum. He conceived
and curated the ‘Spirit of the Blitz’ exhibition on Liverpool and the Second
World War at the Merseyside Maritime Museum, which has been the most successful
history exhibition ever staged in Liverpool.
Simon has led tours to the Western Front for Holts Tours
since 1997 and during 2004 is now leading tours additionally to Normandy and
Canada. He is also teaching courses on the First World War for the Centres for
Continuing Education of Liverpool and Lancaster Universities and will be
developing courses with Manchester University.
Simon’s main First World War research interests are in
military engineering, especially mining and chemical warfare, and the King’s
(Liverpool) Regiment especially the 8th Liverpool Irish Battalion. He is
currently working on a book proposal on the development of protection against
poison gas during the First World War. He has also lectured in the USA in 2003
and 2004 on the King’s Regiment and Native American relations during the
American Revolution. He is a member of the British Commission for Military
History.
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