Hamish de Bretton-Gordon

Previously Commanding Officer of the 1st Royal Tank Regiment and UK’s Joint Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Regiment and NATO’s Rapid Reaction CBRN Battalion, Hamish De Bretton-Gordon is one of the most operationally experienced chemical, biological radiological and nuclear (CBRN) practitioners in the world and has accrued thousands of hours on Chieftain, Challenger 1 and 2 Main Battle Tanks. He is regarded as one of the leading experts in chemical and biological counterterrorism and warfare. His operational deployments have included the Gulf, Cyprus, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan, including a number of highly secret operations that are now declassified. He was appointed OBE in 2005 for exceptional performance. He left the army in 2011 to establish SecureBio, a specialist security business covering CBRN counter terrorism. Hamish spent many years hunting for evidence of Assad’s use of chemical weapons against his own people which he covers in his memoir Chemical Warrior. Hamish advises UK Government at the very highest level on CBRN, military and security matters, and frequently appears on the BBC (including R4 Today), Sky News, ITN, AJE, CBS News, Talk TV, and other global media as an expert commentator. He is a regular columnist and podcaster at the Daily Telegraph. He also holds several academic posts. Closely involved with the Skripal case, he has been called by the Foreign & Commonwealth office ‘the most reliable and accurate source of intelligence on CBRN’. He recently re-joined a very specialist Army reserve organisation to advise the MOD on chemical weapons. He is co-founder and director of Doctors Under Fire with Professor David Nott.