The Sword Guy Podcast

Crystal and Silver in a Shakespearean accent, with Ben Crystal

For transcriptions and more detailed shownotes, please go to: https://swordschool.shop/blogs/podcast/episode-190-crystal-and-silver-in-a-shakespearean-accent-with-ben-crystal 

To support the show, come join the Patrons at  https://www.patreon.com/theswordguy

In today’s episode we have another audiobook/interview mashup!

The Paradoxes of Defence Audiobook Project involved me hiring two narrators to record George Silver’s 1599 book, Paradoxes of Defence. Ben Crystal is a Shakespearean actor, specialising in original pronunciation, and Jonathan Hartman is a modern dramatic actor who narrates in modern English. Renowned historical harpist Andrew Lawrence-King provides the musical punctuation.  

George Silver, an English gentleman, was appalled at the influx of Italian rapier fencing into England, and set out his arguments in favour of the traditional English weapons. He rails against the fashionable new style on the grounds that it is both dangerous to the practitioners, and of no use in warfare.

Whether he was right or wrong, history was against him and the fashionable Italian rapier took over. But his work offers a vital window into the theory and practice of martial arts in England in Tudor times, and ironically provides much of what we know about several Italian rapier masters: Rocco Bonetti, Vincentio Saviolo, and Jeronimo Saviolo.

This podcast episode contains a couple of sample chapters of the audiobook read in original pronunciation by Ben Crystal, which is then followed by my interview with Ben, from episode 58. Here’s a bit more information about the interview:

Ben Crystal is an actor, author, producer, and explorer of original practices in Shakespeare rehearsal and production. In this episode we talk about Ben’s work in exploring how actors would have rehearsed, staged, and performed Shakespeare’s plays in the 16^th century, and how the original rhymes and pronunciation would have sounded. It makes for a completely different experience to what we think of as “Shakespearean” in modern times. Even if you aren’t into Shakespeare this is a fascinating conversation about theatre, memory, language, and of course, swords.

Which leads us on to George Silver. Find out what Ben thinks of Silver and whether he would have wanted to go to the pub with him. For those of you unaware of our project, in 1599 George Silver published his Paradoxes of Defence, offering a window into the Tudor and medieval martial arts as practiced in England.

You can find the audiobook at guywindsor.net/silver

Federations, forests and body awareness, with Marine Beaumel

For transcriptions and more detailed shownotes, please go to: https://swordschool.shop/blogs/podcast/episode-189-federations-forests-and-body-awareness-with-marine-beaumel 

To support the show, come join the Patrons at  https://www.patreon.com/theswordguy

Marine Beaumel is a historical martial arts instructor best known for her work with Royal Armouries Manuscript 1.33 Sword and Buckler. She started her historical martial arts career in Toulouse before moving to Finland, like all sensible people, where she co-founded the Tampere HEMA club. She is a member of the board of the French Federation of Historical European Martial Arts. And she has served on the executive board of the International Federation of Historical European Martial Arts.

We talk a bit about what these federations are and how they help, and move on to talk about Marine’s master’s in plant science and the fascinating ways that plants can be used to help restore the environment and farm more sustainably.

Here is a picture of Marine’s favourite plant, the Judas Tree (Cercis Siliquastrum):

Once Marine has finished her Master’s thesis, she plans to work on a project for the French Federation to improve HEMA practitioners’ body awareness and understanding of how to prevent injury. The project will produce a series of leaflets to give people a basic overview, rather than going into massive depth and detail on these topics. Guy is working on a similar project, called Jumppa, to cover prehab and conditioning for historical martial artists. So, look out for both of those in a few months’ time.

Marine is a fan of fencing with sharps and towards the interview we talk about the benefits of training with sharps, but also the challenges of working with people who don’t seem to have any awareness of the danger of having a very pointy sword in the vicinity of their face.

Vadi and The Four Virtues of Sword Making, with Eleonora Rebecchi

For transcriptions and more detailed shownotes, please go to: https://swordschool.com/podcast/vadi-and-the-four-virtues-of-sword-making-with-eleonora-rebecchi/ 

To support the show, come join the Patrons at  https://www.patreon.com/theswordguy

Today’s episode is a bit different to the usual format, as we have both a delightful sample from an audiobook and a related interview.

I have created an audiobook of Philippo Vadi’s De Arte Gladiatoria Dimicandi. It comes in three parts: 1. My friend, Eleonora Rebecchi (more on her later) has read Vadi’s words in mellifluous Italian. 2. I have read my translation in a rather more clunky English.  3. There’s a combined version, with the Italian chapter followed by its translation in English. Find the audiobook and more details here:

https://swordschool.shop/products/de-arte-gladiatoria-dimicandi-audiobook

This podcast episode contains a couple of sample chapters of the audiobook in both Italian and English, and it’s followed by a repeat of my interview with Eleanora Rebecchi (episode 129, October 2022). Here are the show notes for the interview:

Eleonora Rebecchi is the creative director at Malleus Martialis, producer of excellent training swords, as well as a practising historical fencer and a graphic artist who has done some lovely covers for Guy. She is also a classically trained singer, which you’ll get to hear in this episode.

We talk about how Eleanora and her partner Rodolfo got into designing swords for a living, what goes into the design process, and what qualities a business selling swords needs.

Eleonora explains how the aesthetics, ergonomics and dynamics of a sword fit together, which is demonstrated by Guy’s longsword.

Here is the unboxing video so you can see what he means: https://vimeo.com/722218823

Could HEMA ever be big in China? With Zeng Yang

For transcriptions and more detailed shownotes, please go to: https://swordschool.com/podcast/could-hema-ever-be-big-in-china-with-zeng-yang/

To support the show, come join the Patrons at  https://www.patreon.com/theswordguy

Today’s episode is with Zeng Yang, who is a doctoral student at the Shanghai Sport University, where he is pursuing a PhD in the history of European swordsmanship from the 14th to the 17th centuries. He is a lifelong martial artist having begun training in Wushu at the age of eight. His master’s degree is a comparison of Duan Bing and HEMA.

In our conversation, we talk about the spread of Chinese martial arts to the Western world, through things like kung fu movies and immigration, but the question is, why the same hasn’t happened in the other direction? How could HEMA become more popular in China? We hear about a new term, Bing Ji, which combines all steel weapons in an exciting new form of cross-cultural communication.

Here’s a bit of detail on some of the terms that come up in this episode:

• Wushu: The official name of Chinese martial arts
• Guoshu: The name of Wushu in the early 20th century that literally means "the art of the nation", thus elevating the status of martial arts to the level of the country. But currently people no longer use this term.
• Tau lu (routine or form): It is a pre-designed practice method and an important form of expression in Chinese martial arts. It had already emerged in the Song Dynasty (960-1279 AD) and has been widely used since the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 AD). It is very similar to Assalto in Marozzo. It usually has a fixed start and end action. Each routine roughly contains dozens of actions.
• Bing Ji: The literal meaning is "fighting with cold weapons", which broadly refers to all fighting sports related to steel weapons, and narrowly refers to the fighting sports of historical martial arts. It is a term that emerged around 2016 to replace the concept of HEMA. Because China's HEMA not only involves European weapons, but also includes Chinese weapons, many people believe that continuing to use HEMA is inappropriate. Therefore, this new term has been created to describe historical martial arts sports. At present, Bing Ji has been widely used in China, and it is used in almost all historical martial arts competitions.

HEMA and heresy, with Xian Niles

For transcriptions and more detailed shownotes, please go to: https://swordschool.com/podcast/hema-and-heresy-with-xian-niles/

To support the show, come join the Patrons at  https://www.patreon.com/theswordguy

Xian Niles is a fencing instructor, martial artist and the founder of Spada, a recreational Bolognese fencing study group in maritime Canada. He's also the founder of The Niles Fencing Academy in Halifax, Nova Scotia. In our conversation we talk about his move from representing Barbados in sport fencing to getting into HEMA in Canada.

We also hear about how Xian switched from an engineering degree to theatre, and a very challenging job he had working in mental health security, which required serious martial arts skills to safely restrain people in severe distress.

Xian has a different take on HEMA to some other practitioners, which comes from his childhood in Barbados. The culture is such that people settle disputes publicly using sword-like weapons, and Xian witnessed these fights as a child. These experiences have led Xian to question the historical sources: would it work in real life, and did the person who wrote it ever fight for real? This leads our discussion into what Xian refers to as his heretical views about Messers, Vadi, and Liechtenauer.

We chat about a whole load of other stuff in this episode, including a universal language of HEMA, the difference between ice hockey and HEMA, setting up a competition for kids, tournament rule sets to avoid concussions, and why Guy would rather pour bleach in his eyes than watch HEMA at the Olympics. 

Click here for photos of Guy’s longsword: https://swordschool.com/podcast/hema-and-heresy-with-xian-niles/ 

Historical dancing, historical fencing… and a bear, with Sarina Wagner

For transcriptions and more detailed shownotes, please go to: https://swordschool.com/podcast/historical-dancing-historical-fencing-and-a-bear-with-sarina-wagner/ 

To support the show, come join the Patrons at  https://www.patreon.com/theswordguy

Sarina Wagner is a musical actress and dancer who trained at the University of Music and Arts of the City of Vienna, which is probably the best place in the world to do that. She is a historical fencer focusing on Capoferro and Fabris, as well as Spanish destreza. She is currently a member of the Academia da Espada.

We talk about why Sarina moved to Vienna, and her work running workshops about musicians and dance. One of her favourite composers is Jean-Baptiste Lully, and she likes to do her fencing training to his operas. Have a listen here to see if you’d like to do the same:

(3. Symph., I. Movement // 6. Symph., I. Movement)
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0ITjm7yPne7OTsUspx5p48?si=aa2708b74265446b

The above playlist also contains another of Sarina’s favourite composers, her fellow Bavarian, Christoph Willibald Gluck, plus a couple of tracks from Anton Bruckner.

We talk about how a grounding in dance can really help with fencing, and Sarina recommends all fencers go and take a few dance lessons – the waltz is an easy one to start with. And have a couple of beers first.

As promised, these are the books on historical dance Sarina is working from:

ORCHESORGRAPHY by Thoinot Arbeau (1589) (Sarina’s version is from Dover Publications, 1967)

COURTLY DANCE OF THE RENAISSANCE - A new Translation and Edition of the “Nobilta di Dame” by Fabritio Caroso (1600) (Sarina’s version is from Dover Publications, 1995)

In our conversation we talk about how we can learn from other disciplines, and Sarina sent an extra note to say, “[T]hanks to Chris Lee-Becker and Ton Puey and Academia da Espada for being so supportive and pushing this work forward, because it's also in the spirit of Academia, where everything from the era is supposed to flow together to develop a sense and understanding of the time. In my words, and this fits so well, because this is also how I see myself as an artist: interdisciplinarity.”

Finally, here’s a picture of the armoured bear, Don Herkules, who accompanies Sarina to events: https://swordschool.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/image1-1024x683.jpeg

Swords for all humanity, with Janna Datahan

For transcriptions and more detailed shownotes, please go to: https://swordschool.com/podcast/swords-for-all-humanity-with-janna-datahan/ 

To support the show, come join the Patrons at  https://www.patreon.com/theswordguy

Janna Datahan was born and raised in the Philippines and is currently living in the United States. She's a mother, a published poet, a fibre artist and an aesthetician. Janna discovered Historical European Martial Arts in late 2019 and found her way into the supportive arms of the sword community during the pandemic. She is an active tournament competitor and event organiser. She also hosts a podcast called Swords Against Humanity, a platform she uses to advocate for underrepresented voices in Historical European Martial Arts.

In this episode, Janna explains how she got into HEMA and the support she has received from the community. As a 4’10” woman of colour, Janna didn’t see many people who looked like her when she first started, and so being ‘adopted’ by Fran Lacuata opened up a platform for Janna to start her podcast and also become the social media liaison for the HEMA Alliance.

We talk quite a bit about tournaments – the good, the bad and the ugly, and Janna has ideas on the sorts of event that she would like to attend and how resources within HEMA could be better spent to improve the art.

Of course, as a person of non-average size, the topic of kit comes up, especially gauntlets. There’s also a bit of chat about touring Europe to visit castles and trebuchets, viral crochet patterns, and rage cleaning.

You can find Janna’s podcast, Swords Against Humanity, on your podcast player, and here is her Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/swordsagainsthumanity and her Etsy shop here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/TheTangledTentacleCo

Want to write a training manual? How to write training manuals for historical martial artists, with Guy Windsor

For transcriptions and more detailed shownotes, please go to: https://swordschool.com/podcast/want-to-write-a-training-manual-how-to-write-training-manuals-for-historical-martial-artists-with-guy-windsor/

To support the show, come join the Patrons at  https://www.patreon.com/theswordguy

This episode is an unusual one because there’s no interview. Instead, it’s an extended sample from my new audiobook, From Your Head to Their Hands: How to write, publish, and market training manuals for Historical Martial Artists. The book is designed to be short, clear and to the point, with zero fluff! Listen to this episode to get a good idea of what’s in the book.

The chapters from the audiobook that this episode includes are:

• Introduction: what is a training manual?
• Clarity
• Things that get in the way: procrastination, imposter syndrome, fear, and other things
• The publishing process
• Publishing platforms
• What is marketing?
• Content marketing

To buy the book, head to swordschool.shop, or your can find it on your usual audiobook retailer.

 

 

Messers and More, with Bob Brooks

For transcriptions and more detailed shownotes, please go to: https://swordschool.com/podcast/messers-and-more-with-bob-brooks/

To support the show, come join the Patrons at  https://www.patreon.com/theswordguy

Robert (Bob) Brooks is one of the original generation of historical fencers, who began training with me in the Dawn Duellists’ Society in the early 90s. He founded the Hotspur School of Defence in 2003. So it's turning 20 this year. He has been teaching primarily German historical martial arts and he has taught in over 30 countries on five continents.

Bob is the author of the new book At Your Mercy: The Foundational Guide to the Messer. We talk about why it was needed and what the book covers. You can find it for yourself here: At Your Mercy on Lulu.

We also talk about a fascinating academic study into Bronze age weapons, which Bob and his school were involved in. Here’s a link to the study: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10816-020-09451-0.pdf

And here’s a link to the James Dilley episode where we also talked about the battle of Tollense and forging bronze swords.

See here for a picture of Guy's bronze sword: https://swordschool.com/podcast/messers-and-more-with-bob-brooks/ 

Other links we promised to share:

The Book of Judith – the one and only Italian Storta treatise. https://guywindsor.net/2015/04/previously-unknown-falchion-treatise-discovered/

Hans Sebald Beham woodcuts of the 12 months images, showing Messers in daily use: https://swordschool.com/podcast/messers-and-more-with-bob-brooks/ 

Writing Historical Novels: the Facts and the Fiction, with Elizabeth Chadwick

For transcriptions and more detailed shownotes, please go to: https://swordschool.com/podcast/writing-historical-novels-the-facts-and-the-fiction-with-elizabeth-chadwick/

To support the show, come join the Patrons at  https://www.patreon.com/theswordguy

Elizabeth Chadwick is an award winning best-selling writer of historical fiction. She has been writing since she was a teenager, but it took many years and many books before she was finally published. She has had great success since, so it’s a good example for aspiring writers out there to keep going!

In our conversation we talk about some of the historical figures which feature in Elizabeth’s novels, including William Marshal, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and Joan of Kent. Have a listen to find out what fascinating lives these people led, and also how Elizabeth separates the myths from the facts in the delicate balancing act that is writing a good historical novel about people who actually existed.

We talk about the Akashic Record, which is a way that Elizabeth’s friend Alison can psychically tap into the past. Alison is able to see, hear, feel, touch, and even taste what has gone before. Whatever your beliefs, this is a fascinating way of researching historical characters and events, and check out this article Elizabeth wrote for The History Girls, on the Akashics: https://the-history-girls.blogspot.com/2015/01/alternative-research-psychic-strand-by.html

Here's Alison's description of William Marshal:

"He has incredible courage. He's like a bouncy castle: very buoyant. He's riding with a lot of highborn people. He's awed by them but not overawed. He feels as if he's in the right place. He has a good sense of his own worth. He's very flexible and alert, responds not just in a chitchat way but deeply and appropriately. He knows how to say the right thing at the right time and it comes easily to him. He's alert and all his senses are awakened. He has dark hair, long cheeks, strong nose. His clothes are intricate. His eyes look dark but inside they feel light. I'm seeing the youth and the older man mingled. It is difficult for others to gauge what he's thinking. He has very dark eyes: might be brown might be blue.

There is a woman laughing and William is making her laugh by telling her jokes about the English being loutish and stupid. It's probably Poitiers they are going to. The woman is Eleanor of Aquitaine (Alison had several stabs at saying Poitiers, and prompted by me. She was unsure how to pronounce it). 

Elizabeth’s website is https://elizabethchadwick.com/