Tom is a retired Civil Servant, having retired in 2008 in order to devote himself to his twin interests of military historical research and living history. He has a degree in geography from the University of Oxford and a PhD in the same from Durham, on the settlement of Armenian refugees in Syria and Lebanon after the First World War, and has had two chapters published in academic publications based on this research. After completing his doctorate, Tom spent the bulk of his career involved in mapping and geographic support to the Armed Forces within the Military Survey organisation. In his last eight years, he worked in MOD HQ, working on scientific support to developing capability. In addition, from 1980 he spent eight years in the Territorial Army (Royal Engineers), and retired as a captain in 1988. He took early retirement from MOD at the end of March 2008, since when he has set up and run a living history group, "The Gordon Highlanders 1914-1918" and has been working on a major study of the Highland Soldier in the Great War. He has already spoken or presented papers to various bodies, based either on his military history research or his experience in living history and speaks quite frequently on his research to the Western Front Association.