Jonathan has degrees in Geography (School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford), MA Open and Distance Education (Open University) and British History and the First World War (Birmingham & Wolverhampton). He is a graduate of the School of Communication Arts (London). 

He had a career in TV and Video production in the UK and France first and then moved to online education in 2000 and has worked for the Open University Business School and Greater Brighton MET College. Having started in e-learning he is now as happy teaching in the classroom. He is completing a PGCE in Education at the University of Brighton. 

Like so many, Jonathan's passion and interest in the First World War developed through stories from his late grandfather, John Arthur Wilson MM (profiles on these pages), who served in the Machine Gun Corps on the Somme and at Third Ypres, before transferring to the RFC. Recently he researched the life of his great uncle William Nichol Wilson who served in the RFC and RAF only to be killed in a plane accident over Belgium on 9 June 1919 just six weeks before his 20th birthday. He had enlisted as an air mechanic age 17 and commissioned as a bomber pilot five months later.