Consulting Swordsman
Guy Windsor Thanks to my latest posts, about Lucca and Florence, my Finnish friends are now thinking “right, we’ve seen the last of the English git. He ain’t never coming back”. But hold, not so fast. I have moved countries many times in my life (England ’73-78; Argentina ’78-80; England ’80; Botswana ’81-86; Peru ’86-92; Scotland ’92-94; … Read more
While living in Lucca, I am taking advantage of the opportunity to see something of the rest of Tuscany, and indeed Italy. Most recently, I went to Florence to catch up with Heidi Zimmerman, she of the sumptuous Meyer longsword plate reproductions, as she passed through with Chris Vanslambrouck (who was touring Italy teaching Meyer). I took the … Read more
It has been a very long time since my last post; I have spent relatively little of it in the workshop, other than to make some scabbards, but a while back my friend Heli asked me to make a meditation stool for her. I jumped at it as a cast-iron excuse to potter about with … Read more
This instalment of the Blog of Guy is coming to you from beautiful Italy, a land where historical artefacts of astonishing antiquity are just left lying around! I shit you not, this is a place where the new buildings are anything less than 500 years old. And people seem to live and work in buildings … Read more
I have been stuck in bed with some ghastly ailment for the last week or so, and am still not recovered yet (don’t tell my wife I’m working!), so I’ll be brief. The question on many fencers’ minds is how to win more matches. The solution is pretty simple: be a better fencer. Good fencers … Read more
Five years ago, I got an email from a German friend of mine asking about the German translation of my book, The Swordsman’s Companion. I had no idea what he was talking about, and so he sent me this link. I nearly fell off my chair (this was before I changed to a standing desk, … Read more
Fear management is the key skill underlying all martial arts. If you are not afraid of getting hurt or killed, there’s something wrong with you. But if you are frozen in place by that fear, prevented from acting, then your training has failed. As you may have read, I am a great big fraidy-cat, and … Read more
I have just this very day completed the first draft of my next longsword book; snappily titled Mastering the Art of Arms vol 3: Longsword Advanced Training. Can you think of a better title? To celebrate, here is one small section of the book, that actually started out in life as a draft blog post, as a … Read more
Warning: major sword geekery alert. What follows is exactly the kind of nit-picking pedantry that in the end makes this the right job for me; because this is the only area in the world where I care this much about such apparently trivial or minor details. And what to you may seem a minor change … Read more
My friends at Pulp Literature are running another crowdfunding campaign to raise funds for their second year; I have greatly enjoyed the four volumes of short stories, novellas, poetry and artwork that constituted year one. One of their founders, Jennifer Landels, runs the mounted combat program at Academie Duello, and writes and draws swordfighting scenes … Read more