Brian Hewitt
I was born in Braintree, Essex in March 1958 to parents who had moved from Northern Ireland to look after my sick aunt. I had a happy childhood and was always interested in war movies and history. After leaving school I trained to be a chef at Colchester College and after three years and final exams was offered a job in a 5 star hotel in London in the late 70’s. In the early 80’s I emigrated to Canada and lived for afew years in Toronto where one afternoon I found myself walking up Young Street and seeing a store window with medals on display, I went inside and was hooked for life. My first medal passion was all thing Royal Engineers. Furthering my career I moved to Vancouver Island for a year then on to Vancouver for two more and worked for Pan Pacific Hotels. Over the next 15 years my career took me to many interesting places including Vanuatu in the South Pacific, Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, Singapore, Nepal and China. On returning to the UK to settle down in 2002 I sold quite a portion of my collection towards payment for a house, this is when my passion for the Sudan Service took over. By chance the remaining items in my collection had either an Egypt or Sudan medal, and as I would not be able to replicate my Engineer collection my theme changed, and now my collecting passion is all things Sudan from around 1900 up until Independence.
