Levison Wood is a Sunday Times best-selling author and photographer who led expeditions and been sent on assignments in over 100 countries. He has published eight best-selling books and produced six critically acclaimed documentaries which have been seen by millions around the world.

He has walked 8000 miles along the Nile, the Himalayas and Central America, circumnavigated the Arabian Peninsula, and trekked across Botswana with a herd of wild Elephants. Levison is an Officer in the British Army having served in the Parachute Regiment for 13 years. Levison is an elected Fellow of both the Royal Geographical Society and the Explorers Club in New York.

Levison will help promote the Western Front Way as a walk, and its values of commemoration, education and well being.

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“I have been fascinated with the Great War ever since I was handed my great grandfather and namesakes Great War Mons star as a 20 year old. The medal also served as a mental focusing tool during the later stages of my playing days with England.

During the Centenary I was honoured to have the role of Great War commemorations ambassador for the RFU. Where I had numerous roles most notably helping produce the rose and poppy films, on the impact the Great War had on rugby and its community.

I was also a part of establishing a permanent memorial “the rose and poppy gates” at Twickenham for the English fallen of both wars, as well as a pilgrimage to pay my respects to the 22 England Rugby internationals who lost their lives in the Great War.

It is a huge pleasure to be asked to be an ambassador for the Great Western Way. I am passionate about this brilliant project,  and its focus engages new generations by promoting Peace, wellbeing and the importance of remembrance.”

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‘Passing on the history of the First World War has been done in poetry, and stories, in music and museums, and in plays and films. But here is a new way, to my mind the most beautiful way, most significant way, the creation of a path of peace, The Western Front Way.

An inspired idea, originally proposed in a letter from the Front by one of those who died in that war. It was that No Mans Land, where so many millions had died on all sides, should be transformed into a path of peace, stretching from the Swiss Border all the way to the English Channel, some 1000km.

We will all be able to see that a landscape so utterly destroyed has recovered, that where there was enmity there is now friendship, and that we can walk there now in peace.’

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Peter Fiennes worked at Time Out for 25 years, where he wrote, edited and oversaw the creation of hundreds of guidebooks, including their award-winning city guides. He is the author of the critically acclaimed ‘Oak and Ash and Thorn: the ancient woods and new forests of Britain’ and ‘Footnotes: a journey round Britain in the company of great writers’. His first book was ’To War with God: the army chaplain who lost his faith’ and told the story of his grandfather, Monty Guilford, who worked as a chaplain on the Western Front. His latest is ‘A Thing of Beauty: Travels in Mythical and Modern Greece’ and will be out in October 2021.

Peter lives in south London and is captivated by the ambition and vision of the Western Front Way and cannot wait to walk its length.

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