Consulting Swordsman
[Warning: these videos contain some very graphic violence. If you are under 18, and like screen sword fights, please go here instead.] Game of Thrones is a great TV series, a soap opera of majestic proportions with amazing effects and great stories. It is not, and does not pretend to be, historically accurate in any … Read more
Last weekend I attended the excellent Smallsword Symposium. I am unusual amongst HEMA instructors in that I do lots of different styles; Armizare, of course, but also I.33 sword and buckler, Capoferro rapier, and even the glorious smallsword. The smallsword was my first historical fencing love, way back in the early nineties, and the first treatise … Read more
The rule of p’s clearly states that ‘Proper planning and preparation prevent piss-poor performance.’ I have found this to be true, so every now and then I carve out time to plan. In the short-term, that’s usually ten minutes or so on a Monday morning to think about what I want to get done that … Read more
One of the most common questions I get asked is this: “there are no HMA clubs near me. What should I do?”, and my answer is always the same: “start one”. So the next question is “how do I do that?” The most difficult part of starting a HMA club is deciding to do so. … Read more
I spent the last few days in Guernsey, recovering from launching my latest project. I was invited by my friend the Early Music legend Andrew Lawrence-King to hang out for a few days and attend a concert he was giving with fellow legends Jordi Savall and Frankie McGuire. Guernsey is very much an island, defined … Read more
Everybody breathes, but some do it better than others. Breathing training is the foundation of my martial practice, and as with everything else I do, I’m happy to teach it to you. The topic for the latest instalment of The Swordsman’s Quick Guide was chosen by my student Cecilia Äijälä, and she picked Breathing Training. … Read more
We’ve been in Ipswich for a couple of months, and perhaps the most common question I’ve been asked is “what’s it like” followed in popularity by “Ipswich? Why?” So I thought I’d summarise some of the key points, in the form of a tennis match. Because this is England, and it’s summer. Or at least … Read more
I’m working on the latest instalment of The Swordsman’s Quick Guide, which will cover my foundational breathing exercises. The book is already out to my test readers who have kindly volunteered to wade through the sewage of extraneous verbiage and excessive punctuation in search of the faintest glimmer of useful text. My fellow writers will recognise that … Read more
I’m a Luddite, it’s true. I resist the march of technological progress because I think that most new technologies aren’t labour saving life enhancing devices at all. I was saying this back in the ‘80s when people were extolling the new ‘desktop publishing’ thing. “What used to take two weeks can now be done in … Read more
I loathe bureaucracy in all its forms. And I really don’t understand why so many companies, organisations, and people feel the need to clutter up other people’s houses with pieces of paper that aren’t either proper letters (I’m a big fan) or nice cards (also a fan). As you may know I did a major … Read more