Past and Present
News and highlights
Looking forward to 2016
Robert is please to announce new tour dates with Alan Rooney’s Cultural Experience, please see here for more details.
Looking back in 2015
The crisis in the Ukraine scotched both the Russian and Ukrainian tours this year. At the end of June Robert investigated areas near the Russian border in central Finland to chronicle the Russo-Finnish war of 1939-40. This tour will be offered in 2015 by Alan Rooney’s Cultural Experience Battlefield Tours. The aim is to focus on the battle of Suomussalmi where Finnish ‘motti’ ski tactics catastrophically defeated the Russian 44th division on the Raate Road, and other engagements along the Russian border. A fascinating trip, all conducted bathed in the soft light of the midnight sun.
Looking back in 2014
In September Robert is speaking and participating in the ‘Highway to the Reich’ seminar being conducted at Wolverhampton University on the 10 and 11th.
At the beginning of September the PR programme is being conducted for the Balans Dutch version of A Street in Arnhem. The highlight is a presentation at the Oosterbeek Airborne Museum, likely on the 2nd September.
Robert has two new books released in August this year, “A Street in Arnhem” has been published by Ian Allan in the UK and Balans in Holland. This book chronicles what happened on a single street during the battle of Arnhem in 1944. Released on the 14 August 2014.
In July Robert conducted a field trip to the Somme to do the ground survey for the next book he is writing in the ‘24’ series entitled ‘24 hours at the Somme 1916’.
The first battlefield tour this year is a repeat of the very successful Great Patriotic War tour, with Alan Rooney’s Cultural Experience. Background information is in War Without Garlands.
This is a repeat of last year’s tour that covers the defence of Moscow in 1941-2, the siege of Stalingrad 1942-3 and the decisive tank battle fought at Kursk in the summer of 1943. (postponed this year)
In June Robert was speaker for the Stephen Ambrose 70th Anniversary Tour of D-Day to the Rhine, drawing on material from his D-Day book.
The trip was conducted 31 May to 16 June and included the 70th Anniversary commemorations. It followed Normandy to the fall of Paris, Operation Market-Garden, the Battle of the Bulge and the crossing of the Siegfried Line up to Berchtesgaden. He is conducting further tours in August and September.
Robert planned a tour in the Ukraine entitled Hitler Moves South, a new Alan Rooney Cultural Experience trip between the 7-14 September. The tour covers the battles around Kiev and Kharkov between 1941 to 1943, including the Soviet Dnieper crossings after the victory at Kursk in 1943. This exciting new tour, was unfortunately postponed.
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- D-Day
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- War Without Garlands
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- Panzers in the Ukraine
Looking back in 2013
Robert conducted the Great Patriotic War tour in May with Alan Rooney’s Cultural Experience to Moscow, Stalingrad and Kursk.
Research for the forthcoming book 24 Hours on the Somme began in France between 24-31 July, assisted by Jack Sheldon, the leading author of the German Army in the first World War.
Between the 8-21 October Robert completed a speaking engagement on the voyages of Discovery Black Sea Cruise, which visited Turkey, Bulgaria, Russia, the Ukrain and Georgia. He lectured on conflict in the Crimea, the Charge of the Light Brigade in 1854 and von Manstein’s siege of Sevastopol in 1941-2.
Looking back in 2012
The follow-up issue of the Battlefields series magazine was published Battles That Changed The World and consisted of the battles of Hastings 1066, Waterloo 1815 and Stalingrad 1942-3 in the same way as its predecessor Against all Odds.
In August 2012 Robert Kershaw lead a battlefield tour in support of the Bridges to Arnhem project. This is a high profile motor-rally following the route of the Market-Garden corridor from Belgium to Arnhem across the five major bridges fought over in Southern Holland during September 1944. Veterans from all the participating nations took part, sponsored by big names in the car industry to raise funds in support of Help for Heroes.
In September 2012 he is guided the Cultural Experience Great Patriotic War tour in Russia, covering the battles around Moscow in 1941-2, Stalingrad 1942-3 and Kursk in 1943.
Between 8-21st October 2013 Robert has been programmed to support a Black Sea cruise from Istanbul to Sevastopol and the Crimea. He will be lecturing on conflict in the Crimea during the 19th and 20th Centuries and covering the Charge of the Light Brigade in 1854 and the German siege of Sevastopol in 1942.
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- The Charge of the Light Brigade
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- Siege of Sevastopol 1942
Previously
Between the 2-14 August 2011 Robert is lecturing on a Mediterranean cruise aboard the QE2. The theme covered via a series of presentations is the primary differences between the Second World War generation and our own based upon his book Never Surrender.
On the 26 September 2011 he is giving a presentation on the Battle of Crete May 1941 at the Rifles Museum in Winchester, based on his account taken from Sky Men.
In June 2011 Robert Kershaw led an American group from Stephen Ambrose Tours during a D-Day battlefield tour commemoration from Normandy to Paris. He is due to lead a further tour in September.
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- The German battery at Longues-sur- Mer during the recent D-Day Tour.
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- Robert Kershaw lecturing before Eisenhower's original D-Day Map at Southwick House during the Stephen Ambrose D-Day Tour
In 2011 he participated in a forthcoming National Geographic documentary about Sitting Bull and the Battle of the Little Bighorn, filmed at the National Park in the USA, where he was interviewed about his conclusions published in Red Sabbath.
D-Day: Piercing the Atlantic Wall – has been selected as a finalist book in the Army Historical Foundations’s Distinguished Writing Awards in the United States.
Previously he has spoken at one of the Bovington Tank Museum’s ‘Out of Hours’ Lectures on ‘Tank Men’, describing the typical tank crew experience during both World Wars.
Robert Kershaw has been involved in interviews and filming for the National Geographic Land Warfare TV documentary series. In Part 2 Battle Machines he filmed interviews inside a World War I British Mark IV Tank and driving and commentating from a Russian T-34 tank, describing the harsh physical and psychological condition crews had to endure.
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- Bovington Tank Museum’s ‘Out of Hours’ Lectures on ‘Tank Men’
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- Battle machines
