Pat Thane and Christine Counsell join as Patrons

Our list of Patrons expands again today with two incredibly well-respected women from the history community kindly agreeing to support the Trust's aims. Christine Counsell is a Senior Lecturer at Cambridge University and the Editor of Teaching History - the Historical Association's journal for over 3,500 history teachers. She will bring much experience of having helped to develop the history curriculum and the pressures history teachers are under. Our next confirmed Patron is Professor Pat Thane, Leverhulme Professor of Contemporary British History and Director, Centre for Contemporary British History. We are really chuffed both of them have agreed to be Patrons since they are incredibly busy with lots of other organisations.

So that brings our latest list of Patrons to nine: Professor David Cannadine, Rt Hon John Hutton MP, Tony Robinson, Karen Pollock, Professor Brian Brivati, Dr Tristram Hunt, Ben Macintyre, Christine Counsell and Professor Pat Thane

More to be confirmed soon, so watch this space!

We've signed up to the 'Learning Outside the Classroom' Manifesto

Having met with the Learning Outside the Classroom team at the DCSF yesterday, I'm pleased to sign up the GBHT to their manifesto which promotes the benefits of learning outside the classroom and will help to make sure that teachers have the resources and training to understand the benefits of taking young people out of school. I am very hopeful that Gareth's Trust will directly help to fulfill the aims of the manifesto and that in time we will also be able to provide best practice and advice to history teachers who want to take their students out of school.

It is just a week to go now until the launch of the Trust and I am delighted that we have three year 11 students from Bramhall High School in Stockport coming to tell guests about their experiences going on the Battlefields tour this year. I'm very happy with the turnout for the launch - we've been inundated with people wanting to attend and now have had to start a reserve list! I wouldn't have been able to achieve it without my brilliant intern Steph who has been working very hard to pull everything together. Lots of great candidates applied, so sorry to those of you who didn't get the position, but I hope you will still support the aims of the Trust!

So now it's just the last minute things to finalise. I've ordered a banner stand and am in the process of designing leaflets thanks to a wonderful pro bono offer from John Schwartz at Soapbox Communications Soon I'm going to have to think about writing my speech... If anyone has any good quotations illustrating the importance of understanding history please send them my way....

Rushed off my feet...

There's just been no time to blog - I have no idea how regular bloggers do it! We're not far away from the launch of the Trust on the 2nd July and there's still so much work to do on it, but we're getting there. Tony Robinson agreed he could speak at the launch today and James Naughtie of Today Programme fame rather wonderfully said he would host the event. Now we just have to find some young people who have been on the battlefield tours to build up the nerve to tell us their experiences!

Given the sheer amount of admin I'm having to do at the moment I decided to advertise for an intern to help out and have been very pleasantly surprised by the large number of high quality applications I've received. Deciding who to pick is going to be the hard thing! Closing date is Wednesday 18th though, so if you know of someone who might be good to help, do get them to contact me! And there's still the need to find somewhere with a computer and phone...

Sometimes I feel like I'm doing two full time jobs, but I'm getting more excited about the launch now it all seems to be coming together. Right, better go and decide on the canapés...

Quiz raised £1000 for the GBHT!

Things have been so busy that I haven't blogged recently, but I wanted to celebrate our first fundraising quiz which raised £1000 and was kindly organised by the Young Fabians. Over 100 people attended and it was a pretty tough quiz organised around things that Gareth would have known a lot about, though even he wouldn't have got some of those questions! Thanks must go to Ellie Levenson and Richard Messingham for pulling it all together and to everyone who turned up and donated.

Now to turn to the organising for the big launch on the 2nd... Will post again soon.

First two Patrons confirmed - Brian Brivati and Tony Robinson

I'm delighted that Brian Brivati, Director of the John Smith Memorial Trust and former Professor of Contemporary History at Kingston University, has agreed to become a Patron of Gareth's History Trust. So too has Tony Robinson, the well-loved presenter of my favourite series - Time Team, and of course Baldrick in Blackadder.

Gareth and I would look forward to our Sundays watching Time Team, particularly if the programme had a Roman theme. There is nothing as exciting as watching the episode when the team uncovers a mosaic at the bottom of someone's garden in Cirencester. The thinking behind Time Team is similar to that behind Gareth's Trust which is to help make history more accessible to the public by bringing it alive in the here and now, rather than trying to find it only in the pages of books.

We also, along with much of the nation, loved to watch Blackadder, and Blackadder Goes Forth has one of the most poignant moments in British comedy when eventually they do go over the top - Blackadder's 'cunning plan' fails to help them as usual. Gareth was most moved by the way men of all classes were thrown together in the First World War and formed such strong bonds of loyalty during a time of such huge sacrifice. I think that pupils could watch worse things than that series of Blackadder to get a sense, albeit from a light-hearted perspective, of life in the trenches.