Born in Essex in 1958, Tomahawk Films' producer Brian Matthews has spent the last 50 years in the small village of Twyford on the beautiful River Itchen, near Winchester on the beautiful South Coast, from where he has worked as a writer, producer, broadcaster & military historian since joining the world of international film & television in 1982.
A student of World War Two and a collector of German military memorabilia and Nazi Military Music since opening up part of his parent's house as a small museum at the age of 13, Brian, (pictured), has come up the hard way through the ranks of film & television, working variously as a production manager & floor-manager on a number of UK television series and programmes for ITV & Channel Four including Jack Hargreaves 'Out of Town', Channel Four's 'Brookside', Ashes Test Cricket for Channel Nine Australia and numerous live outside broadcasts for Eurosport and many top rock bands, before becoming a local radio presenter & narrator of programmes for the BBC & Satellite Television Networks and a host of WWII-interest television documentaries and DVDs.
However, it was his life-time interest in World War II that brought about his eventual creation of Tomahawk Films through which he wrote, funded and produced his acclaimed 50 minute television documentary 'Channel Islands Occupied' before turning his attention to World War Two German Military Music and the little-known soldier-musicians who performed it, resulting in his acclaimed reference book The Military Music and Bandsmen of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich 1933-45, published in 2002.
A five-year parallel contract working as the Media Consultant to the States of Guernsey Tourist Board in the mid-1990s also saw Brian regularly writing & broadcasting on the subject of that island's war-time German occupation, in addition to working as a historical adviser to the many television & movie companies that filmed there during Brian's tenure; however it is Tomahawk Films and its continued involvement in the on-going study of Nazi Music from that turbulent German era beginning in 1933 and lasting until 1945, that is Brian's great passion!
Originally a television production company when first formed in 1987, Tomahawk Films is now run as a full-time professional archive specialising in Third Reich military & civilian music and many international Film & TV Production Companies from MGM in Hollywood to the BBC in London often turn to Brian first for help & advice with their historical archival needs. In addition Tomahawk also continues to produce broadcast-studio quality III Reich music CDs which are avaliable directly to the collector & enthusiast via the company's renowned mail-order catalogue and on-line via the Tomahawk's website and on Amazon-UK. Today 'Bruno', (as he is often known), as well as overseeing the day-to-day running of Tomahawk also continues to combine his work as a freelance presenter, voice-over artiste & military journalist with his on-going personal passion for collecting Third Reich Military Music-related ephemera & memorabilia, notable of which is his love for Imperial German & Third Reich bugles!
In particular, Brian is very serious about his on-going work writing & researching in the field of Third Reich military music and in maintaining ties with German veterans of World War Two, occasioning Willy Casselmann, Chormeister, of the Waffen-SS Veterans Soldatenchor, Minden, Germany to state in recent years that: " In all of Germany I have never met another man, in Brian, with such love for German soldiership, military music, and the songs that soldiers sing..! "