Christopher Joll
After Oxford University and the RMA Sandhurst, Christopher Joll spent six years as an officer in The Life Guards, with whom he served four tours of duty in Northern Ireland. On leaving the Army, he worked for the next thirty-five years in the City.
From his earliest days, Joll has written articles, features, short-stories and reportage. In 2012 he wrote the text for Uniquely British: A Year in the Life of the Household Cavalry; with a Foreword by Her late Majesty The Queen. Since 2018, Nine Elms Books have published his The Drum Horse in the Fountain: Tales of the Heroes & Rogues in the Guards; Spoils of War: The Treasures, Trophies & Trivia of the British Empire; Black Ice, the memoirs of the former soldier, double-amputee and World Para-bobsleigh champion, Corie Mapp; The Imperial Impresario: The Treasures, Trophies & Trivia of Napoleon’s Theatre of Power; and in November 2023 Nine Elms will be publishing Bonfire of History: The Lost Treasures, Trophies & Trivia of Madame Tussaud’s Exhibition. Joll is currently working on Bend Sinister: A History of Royal Bastards since 1066, to be published in late-2024, and is the author of the fifteen-volume military-historical/action-adventure roman fleuve, The Speedicut Saga.
Since leaving the Army in 1975, Joll has also been involved in devising and managing charity fund-raising events including the Household Cavalry Pageant (2007), the Chelsea Pageant (2008), the British Military Tournament (2010-2013), the Gurkha Bicentenary Pageant (2015), the Waterloo Bicentenary National Service of Commemoration & Parade at St Paul’s Cathedral (2015), and the royal premiere of The Great War Symphony at the Royal Albert Hall (2018), for which he edited an hour long ‘backing’ video using Imperial War Museum archive footage.
When not writing or directing ‘military theatre’, Joll is a video podcaster on the YouTube channel in his role as the Regimental Historian of the Household Cavalry.