I am new to Delphi, and, using V2, am working my way through the
"Getting Started" tutorials.
Problem that I am getting is that despite following the tutorial to
the letter for setting up the GDS customer database, I cannot get any
information into the DBGrid field either at design or runtime.

I get the impression from the way the manuals are written that the
connection to the database is automatic - I do not need to have any
servers or additional programs running. I have also fully reinstalled
Delphi from the installation CD in case my machine corrupted the
original install.

Everything else is going well - it is only the database thing that
refuses to work.

Can anyone let me have some directions please?

If I am not mistaken, you are suffering from a small, but critical step
missing in that tutorial. You need to set the Active property of the TTable
to True. Do this in the Object Inspector.