Winning pupils begin history tour

The trip is part of a scheme run by the Imperial War Museum

A group of sixth-form history students from Surrey are setting off for Thailand and Australia on Monday, on a two-week lottery-funded study tour.

They came top in a national contest run as part of the Imperial War Museum's Their Past, Your Future scheme.

During the tour, the 27 students from Godalming College will visit historical sites and document their experiences on the web with blogs, audio and video.

Their visit will focus on the experience of war in the 20th Century.

The museum's Their Past, Your Future project began in 2004, as part of the 60th anniversary celebrations to mark the end of World War II. The scheme is currently running until December 2009.

Other schools taking part are running visits to Singapore and Japan for Hiroshima celebrations, a trip to the Balkans, and tours of World War I battlefields in France and Belgium.