Professor Peter Doyle
Military Historian
Peter is a leading military historian and military terrain expert. He is an established author of many works of military history, with special reference to the Great War, and has been involved with archaeological work in Flanders. He is visiting professor in history at London South Bank University.
Fields of Expertise: Battlefield Archaeology, First World War
Peter specialises in the understanding of military terrain, with special reference to the two world wars. He is also an author specialising in the British experience of war, and material culture of war. A member of the British Commission of Military History, and secretary of the Parliamentary All Party War Graves and Battlefield Heritage Group, he is the author of many works of military history and the material culture of warfare. In the field of battlefield archaeology he worked on projects as diverse as the Great War trenches threatened by the A19 motorway on the outskirts of Ieper in Belgium, to leading the excavation at the site of the ‘Great Escape’ at Zagan in Poland. In 2013, he was invited to examine the excavations at Messines, Belgium – the largest archaeological investigation on the Western Front, which featured in the Channel 5 documentary: ‘Tunnels of Death’. His special field of study is the interpretation of historic terrain, and he is a noted expert in the field having studied battles both in the USA (Revolutionary War, Apache Wars, Civil War) and Europe (Gallipoli, the Western Front, Normandy, Arnhem, Battle of the Bulge). His conference, Terrain in Military History, held at the University of Greenwich in 2000, formed part of the development of International Conferences in Military Geoscience. A regular speaker at conferences and in invited lectures, he has given numerous specialist battlefield talks and battlefield tours. Peter Doyle is an occasional visiting lecturer at the US Military Academy, West Point