Tonie and Valmai Holt

Last updated

Tonie Holt (10 December 1932 - 5 September 2024) and Valmai Williams Holt (born 23 December 1935), British military historians, wrote military history books and battlefield tour guides under the names Major and Mrs. Holt and pioneered the modern battlefield tour industry.

Tonie Holt was a graduate of Sandhurst Military College and was commissioned in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers in 1953. He later earned an engineering degree from Royal Military College of Science at Shrivenham, Oxfordshire. Later in his British Army career, he served at the Royal Radar Establishment at Malvern, Worcestershire, where he worked on the mortar-locating radar “Project Cymbeline.”

Tonie Holt and Valmai Williams married in 1958. The couple had two children. They collected postcards from World War I, which led them to publish books for other collectors. After Tonie Holt's retirement, they also founded Major & Mrs Holt's Battlefield Tours in the 1980s and led tours of battlefield sites in western Europe, Gallipoli, north Africa, Italy, Crimea, the United States, Vietnam, India and the Falklands through the 1990s. When the Holts sold the company in the late 1990s, they began writing again and published guides to battlefields and books about World War I. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Works

References

  1. Obituaries, Telegraph (24 September 2024). "Major Tonie Holt, pioneer of battlefield tours who helped thousands make pilgrimages to war graves". The Telegraph.
  2. "Major Tonie Holt obituary: Pioneer of battlefield touring". 22 October 2024.
  3. "Roads to the Great War: Remembering Major Tonie Holt, Battlefield Guru, Author, and Friend". 8 October 2024.
  4. "Valmai Holt".
  5. "Tonie and Valmai Holt : University of Sussex Special Collections and Mass Observation Archive Blog : Group blogs : University of Sussex".