Since 1985

My teaching motto has always been ‘History is a damned good story. What it needs is damned good telling’! 

The World War I Battlefield Experience allowed MTI to show how this worked in practice. I am delighted to say Scottish school History departments agreed with us and hence we are still the leading provider of Battlefield Experiences in Scotland... in our 30th year. 

In the late 1970s the causes and events of World War I were central to the third- and fourth-year Scottish school curriculum in History. 

As a young and enthusiastic teacher, I firmly believed that it was crucial for the students’ understanding and appreciation of the subject if they could have as much direct contact with past experiences as possible and so I determined to use the physical environment i.e. Geography to maximise the appreciation of History. To that end I organised my first overseas trip for my fourth-year class - a week to Ypres and the Somme. 

This trip which took place in 1979 blew me away, if you pardon the pun!

To visit the cemeteries, to see the memorials and to walk in the footsteps of the Tommies in the trenches was an extremely moving experience for both teachers and students alike. I determined to make this a regular feature of the History course and for the following ten years made biannual visits to the battlefields of World War I. 

This had a greatly beneficial effect on the examination performance of those who participated. Each visit also added to my own knowledge of the geography of the area and understanding of the history of the events of those years of world carnage. 

As a lecturer in History at Moray House College of Education from 1991-93, I also took the Social Subjects students who were training to be History teachers to Flanders and the Somme.

The intention was to demonstrate not only how to teach History effectively but how to use the environment as a resource while mastering the technical challenges in organising an overseas event for school students. 

These two visits were extremely popular and highly effective and also gave me the opportunity to take the ‘trip’ to another level. Music, drama, archive film, documents, poetry, civics and foreign languages were added which became a true ‘curriculum for excellence’ long before the term was used in secondary education. 

This was no longer a ‘trip’ but an ‘experience’ which I realised would have a profound effect on students’ understanding of themselves and effectively change their perception of life and priorities. 

When I left formal school teaching in 1996 to develop Mercat Tours in Edinburgh, I missed taking groups abroad.

Since my teaching career had brought me in frequent contact with many history teachers across Scotland and so was known and trusted by them, I set up a new company called Mercat Tours International which was dedicated to taking students to the battlefields of WWI and WWII. 

Our unique selling point was that MTI would supply the guide and teaching programme, essentially providing an Experience that would teach students, allow space for student/staff relationships to develop whilst also illustrating different teaching strategies for teaching staff as well. This was a win/win situation for both staff and students! Moving into our 4th decade, the rest, as they say, is history.