John Sadler

John Sadler is a native Northumbrian of extended lineage and inherited his love of the borders and their turbulent history from both his father and grandfather. He was a lawyer by profession but achieved his millennial goal of moving to full time writing, alongside lecturing, tour guiding and living history/historical interpretation. He was for 25+ years a visiting lecturer at the Former School of Lifelong Learning at Newcastle and then Sunderland Universities, (now the ‘Explore’ Programme). He has been extensively published since 1988 on the history of the Anglo-Scottish wars and Border Reivers and may modestly claim to be the leading authority in the field. He is Northern England Chair of the UK Battlefields Trust.

He can claim to have walked over most of the ground he writes about, often more than once and in some instances, many times! He’s marched over every battlefield and visited just about every castle, bastle and pele tower that survives, (and there are a lot of these). He regularly leads tour groups across the border country and on battlefield walks. As a living history exponent and great believer in experimental archaeology, he is a partner in John Sadler’s Time Bandits (with Bev Palin). As a duo, they appear in a variety of historical locations on both sides of the line in a range of character guises – as Lord Bothwell, Sir John Forster, Kinmont Will Armstrong and Bastard Heron. He lives in Northumberland, is married, has two daughters and three grandsons and is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He is the author of The Hot Trod: A History of the Anglo-Scottish Border.