My passion for history is one I share with my older brother. He once complained of the shortcomings of his (now ex) wife, exclaiming, “She doesn't even know about the retreat from Mons.”

An extreme example perhaps but I sometimes share his frustration. My 13-year-old son knows, through school, what it was like to be a Victorian servant but, through no fault of his own, would struggle to tell me what century Queen Victoria reigned in, let alone the precise years. It's history without the context.

My late father, born in 1900 whilst Victoria was still on the throne, was in his mid-60s when I was born. He just missed out on joining the army for the Great War - in his memoirs he talked of his disappointment, “I was itching to go to war,” he wrote, envying the medals worn by boys only months older.

I've always felt that surely by 1918 the horrors of war would have replaced its glorification as initially experienced by the 1914 generation. But even given the bravado it illustrates what vastly different worlds my father and I inhabited.

The medals did come, however, but from the Second World War. And, as an old man, my father started collecting medals. On his death the collection passed to me. Eighty or so medals, from the Crimean War to Northern Ireland and a few Nazi and Soviet ones along the way. My favourites were the ones with the rank, name and number of the recipient etched around the rim. Who were these brave men, what did they do to get these medals?

I share my name with a not-so great Victorian general, Sir George Pomeroy Colley, who in charge of the British army in 1881 managed to lose the First Boer War. Perched up on Majuba Hill, he gave instructions not to be disturbed – he was having an afternoon nap. Meanwhile the Boers crept up the mountain and poor old Colley was shot through the head, the battle was lost and ultimately the war. We had his biography on our shelves but I'm not sure whether he was a direct relative but as a child I certainly believed it.

And from these disparate influences grew my fascination with history and war.