Guy Wilson is one of the coauthors of The Art of the Gun, Miniature Books series. Guy Wilson studied at New College, Oxford, and subsequently at Manchester University. He worked for thirty years at the Royal Armouries, one of the oldest museums in the world and the UK’s national museum of arms and armour. For half that time he led the museum as Master of the Armouries.
Under Guy Wilsons guidance the museum developed into a multi-site operation in the UK with the complete redisplay of the museum in the Tower of London, the opening of an artillery museum near Portsmouth and the building of an entirely new museum in Leeds, Yorkshire.
He established for the first time in the Armouries a continuing program of temporary exhibitions and also led the efforts to develop an international dimension to the work of the museum which led to co-operation agreements with the Armoury of the Moscow Kremlin in Russia, the Nikko Toshogu Shrine in Japan and the Frazier Historical Museum in Louisville, Kentucky.
Since retiring from the Armouries Guy Wilson worked internationally on museum and arms and armour research projects, From 2002 to 2010 he served as Chairman of the International Committee of Museums and Collections of Arms and Military History (ICOMAM).
Guy has lectured widely and published many monographs, papers and articles on a wide variety of aspects of the history of arms and armour and museum practice, and has co-authored two books on the Royal Armouries and its collection. He was responsible for making over 50 films for the new Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds and has scripted and taken part in two series of “Arms in Action” films for UK and US television.
As part of the Royal Armouries commemoration of the Millennium in 2000 Guy commissioned the British composer Karl Jenkins to compose “The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace” and, himself, prepared the libretto. This work has since become one of the UK’s most popular modern choral works. Guy has also written the words for a number of other musical compositions and is currently the artistic director of a project to create a major centre for the development of youth music in the heart of the city of Leeds.
