Tour Directors
Our tours are led throughout by experts – both specialists in their fields and convivial hosts. Every year ACE welcomes a select band of new Tour Directors to its portfolio.
ACE’s specialists are hugely popular with our travellers. They range from classical musician and broadcaster Sandy Burnett, to soldier turned academic John Greenacre.
Visit our video page to watch our Tour Directors introduce their tours. Click here
Tom Abbott, BA, MA
Tom Abbott is an art and architectural historian associated with the Foundation of Prussian Palaces and Gardens
Harriet Allen, MA, MSc, PhD
geographer and Fellow and Director of Studies at Girton College, Cambridge
Andrew Barber
Andrew Barber worked for the National Trust for over 30 years as a curator in the East Midlands and Yorkshire, advising on the care and presentation of a number of properties.
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John Binns
Rev John Binns is Visiting Professor at the Institute of Orthodox Christian Studies in Cambridge and a Research Associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.
David Bostwick, MA, PHD
lecturer and consultant on historic buildings of the 16th and 17th century
John Bryden, MA, ARCM, ARCO
international concert pianist and organist and classical music lecturer
Christopher Catling, MA, FSA, MCIfA
an archaeologist who has worked on sites in Portugal and in the Portuguese African islands of Cape Verde
John Deathridge, MA, DPhil, FRCO
John Deathridge is a former organ scholar, graduate and postgraduate of Lincoln College Oxford.
René Dessing, PhD
art historian and director and the sKBL Foundation dedicated to Dutch architecture
Rupert Dickens, BA, MA
Rupert is an art historian and journalist specialising in Dutch and Flemish art.
Charles Hind, MA, FSA
architectural historian and Chief Curator and H.J. Heinz Curator of Drawings at the RIBA
Morag Hunter, PhD
geologist and teaching fellow in the department of Earth Sciences, Cambridge.
Nicholas James, DipEA, MA, PhD
member of Cambridge University's Archaeology and Anthropology Department
Marcus Kohler, BA
ecologist and ornithologist who works in the UK, South East Asia, Australasia and Africa and has led wildlife tours across the world
Lionel Laborie, PhD
visiting researcher at Goldsmiths, University of London, concentrating on religious toleration and dissent in early modern Europe
Richard McColl, MA
Richard is a British news and travel journalist who has made his home in Colombia for over a decade
John Parker, MA, DPhil, FLS, VMH
was Professor of Plant Cytogenetics and Director of the University Botanic Garden at the University of Cambridge
John Redmill, DipArch, FRIAI
architect and Honorary Vice President of the Irish Georgian Society
Richard Rex
Professor of Reformation History at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Queens’ College, Cambridge
Ashley Solomon, FRAM, HonRCM
Chair and Head of Historical Performance at the Royal College of Music and Director of Florilegium
Andrew Spira, MA
Andrew was a specialist in Byzantine and Russian icons at the Temple Gallery, London, before working as a curator at the V&A Museum.
Martin Symington, BA
Martin Symington, BA, is a travel journalist and is the author of the Dorling Kindersley guidebook to Portugal and the AA Essential Guide to Portugal.
Rose Walker, PhD, FSA
Dr Rose Walker is an art historian with a background in Classics and Medieval studies
Nicholas Wearne, BA, MPhil
a former ACE Bursary student, who is a tutor and Junior Fellow at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire
Mark Welch, BSc, PhD
Mark Welch is a research scientist in the Department of Earth Sciences at the Natural History Museum in London
Christopher Wellington, MA
historian, long-term resident of Piacenza and fluent Italian speaker
Vivien Whelpton, MA
Vivien Whelpton is a literary historian and biographer who has written extensively on First World War poetry and literature.
Roger White, MA, FSA
architectural and garden historian, former secretary of the Georgian Group
Niamh Whitfield, MA, PhD, FSAScot, FSA
archaeologist and art historian specialising in medieval Ireland
