We make several promises at Bird Battlefield Tours (we might get you lost but that is not a promise). You won’t be lectured to death, there will be a minimum of driving, you will not stay in a Holiday Inn. Your travelling companions will mostly be affable – professional bores having been banished over the years. There will be hiccups of course – I was assaulted by a Lancastrian during a Champagne tour because he found my George Formby impressions puerile, but champagne had something to do with it. Nowadays we like to offer something the punter couldn’t do by himself: touring the newly excavated tunnels at Vauquois near Verdun, or going inside the château of La Haye Sainte at Waterloo, noting the bullet holes preserved in the wooden skirting and doors, and seeing where Baring and his KGL survivors escaped out the back (now the downstairs lavatory). When we go to Venice (where I can indulge my arty side) we can admire the interiors of private palazzi, shamelessly exploiting connections, and borrow a boat to put-put around the canals.