Historian Michael Stedman has helped keep alive the memory of a First World War battle that became a byword for futile and indiscriminate slaughter.

Mr Stedman, from Leigh, was a prime motivator behind a £2.5 million visitor centre dedicated to teaching a new generation about the Battle of the Somme.

The centre, at the French hamlet of Thiepval where the battle began in 1916, opened in September and attracts about 800 visitors a day.

Mr Stedman came up with the idea on a trip to Thiepval in the 1970s. There he saw Lutyen's Memorial to the Missing, which bears the names of more than 70,000 men lost in the battle.

It struck a chord and, on his return home, he began to research and write a book on the Salford Pals, whose three battalions were almost totally wiped out at Thiepval on the opening day of the battle. Several other books on the First World War followed, as well as one on Thiepval itself, which is soon to re-published.

But Mr Stedman, now a full-time historian, felt more was needed to ensure that Thiepval and the memorial remained relevant to younger generations.

In 1999, he put his idea for a visitor centre to Sir Frank Sanderson, a retired Sussex businessman and chairman of his local branch of the Royal British Legion.

Sir Frank then managed to secure funding from bodies including the EU, Department of the Somme and Kent County Council. Money also came from personal donors, including 102-year-old veteran Douglas Roberts, who gave £102.

Mr Stedman used his extensive knowledge of Thiepval to provide historical material for the centre.

"It has been the finest thing that I can imagine being involved in," he said.

"I feel we've produced something that portrays the cost and the brutality of war in a way that will contribute much to people's understanding of it.

"I call The Somme the greatest classroom on earth and I believe that everybody, at some point in their life, should go and visit these places. It helps you to realise where you stand in the great scheme of things and to understand the terrible events that have been brought upon humanity by war."