Consulting Swordsman
Guy Windsor 
I’m teaching a seminar here in Suffolk for my friends at Suffolk HEMA on Saturday October 18th. If you’d like to learn to move better, and to analyse any guard position or movement from a structural perspective, you should come! Move Like Fiore Improve your structure, flow, and control in Fiore’s art of arms Good … Read more
Alison Balsom is retiring this week, quitting after 25 years at the very top of the classical music world. She is probably the most famous classical trumpeter of her generation, and certainly ranks with the greats: André, Marsalis, Hardenberger, Harjanne (go Finland!). She’s 46. I have several of her 17 albums, and she is an … Read more
On Monday this week I sent the final draft of From Medieval Manuscript to Modern Practice: the Dagger Techniques of Fiore dei Liberi off to the editor. Hurrah! There’s a lot of admin work to do from here, checking edits, sending to layout, making sure all the links work etc., but let’s put it this … Read more
As I posted on Sword People last week, I’m taking 100 days off alcohol. Why would I do that? The DEXA Scan: an uncomfortable truth I was in London a couple of weeks ago for a family reunion, and took the opportunity to wiggle along for another DEXA scan (at BodyScan UK). My last was … Read more
Find Your Way Into the Art of Arms: A New Beginner’s Course in Historical Martial Arts When I started out in Historical Martial Arts, it was an entirely new field. There were no maps, no guides, and no signs. Fast forward a couple of decades, and we’ve built a thriving, global community. That’s wonderful—but now … Read more
I flew to Belgrade last week to attend the Sword and Balkan event. I arrived on Thursday evening and spent Friday exploring downtown Belgrade to get a sense of Serbian culture. I’ll write that up properly next, but in the meantime: if you’re visiting Serbia, do not skip the National Museum on Republic Square… The … Read more
It’s a great week for Vadi fans. My comprehensive new course “The Philippo Vadi Longsword Course” is now live on both Teachable and Swordpeople, and my friend Michael Chidester has also just launched his new crowdfunding campaign for a very high-end and beautiful facsimile of Vadi’s treatise, De Arte Gladiatoria Dimicandi. This was a coincidence, and not … Read more
I started editing the second edition of my book Swordfighting for Writers, Game Designers, and Martial Artists a little while ago and pretty quickly it developed into a total rewrite, aimed solely at writers. I’ve cut 45,000 words already, and will probably end up redoing the whole thing from scratch. Good writing is all about … Read more
Swordschool turned 24 years old yesterday! March 17th 2001 saw the very first class I taught as a full-time professional instructor, at the Olympic Stadium in Helsinki. Not the whole Olympic Stadium. A small room somewhere inside it. I was expecting about 6 to 12 people, and something over 70 showed up. Some of them … Read more
Hallelujah! At last! After three months of back and forth with the printers (and setting up to print with someone else at twice the price), the Fiore Facsimile with translation is now working properly. Everyone who bought it in December has had their order re-run yesterday, so new copies are being printed and shipped. Now … Read more