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Guy Windsor's Swordschool

Dr. Guy Windsor is a world-renowned instructor and a pioneering researcher of medieval and renaissance martial arts. He has been teaching the Art of Arms full-time since founding The School of European Swordsmanship in Helsinki, Finland, in 2001. His day job is finding and analysing historical swordsmanship treatises, figuring out the systems they represent, creating a syllabus from the treatises for his students to train with, and teaching the system to his students all over the world. Guy is the author of numerous classic books about the art of swordsmanship and has consulted on swordfighting game design and stage combat. He developed the card game, Audatia, based on Fiore dei Liberi's Art of Arms, his primary field of study. In 2018 Edinburgh University awarded him a PhD by Research Publications for his work recreating historical combat systems. When not studying medieval and renaissance swordsmanship or writing books Guy can be found in his shed woodworking or spending time with his family.

Jamie MacIver
Featured Post

Safety in historical martial arts, and some tasty Bolognese!

Hi! I’m currently working on a new online course- a set of wrestling plays from Von Baumann, which Jessica Finley has interpreted, and we shot together in July this year. It’s a fascinating little mini-system embedded in the larger treatise. Watch this space… Speaking of online courses, I’m working out ways to open up my platforms to other instructors. I have two services for distributing courses: teachable, and swordpeople.com. These cost several thousand dollars a year to maintain, which is...

the Armizare Vade Mecum

Hi! The big news this week is that I have hashed out an arrangement with Freelance Academy Press, publishers of my The Medieval Dagger and The Armizare Vade Mecum, that allows me to sell all versions of these two books on my shopify store. Hurrah! If you’re not familiar with The Armizare Vade Mecum, it’s a series of mnemonic verses for learning Fiore’s Art of Arms. It began when I was thinking about the verse structure of Fiore’s writing, and noticed that one of the paragraphs on folio 9v has...

The Theory and Practice of Historical Martial Arts, with Kelley Costigan

Hi! It took longer than expected to recover from my Mexico trip, and I actually follow my own rules of putting health ahead of work, so I’m a bit behind on various projects. But that’s ok- it’s not like this year has been unproductive with four book launches so far (From Medieval Manuscript to Modern Practice: Wrestling; From Your Head to Their Hands; Get Them Moving; and The Swordsman’s Companion 20th Anniversary edition) and another one likely (see below). So I took the time I needed to lie...

Hi, this is just to let you know that the Mastering the Art of Arms subscription, on both Teachable and SwordPeople, has been updated with the new Medieval Dagger course. If you're already enrolled, you should find it in your dashboard. Do let me know if you have any trouble accessing it. If you're not enrolled (yet), you should know that there are now over a dozen online courses in the package, including: The Medieval Wrestling, Dagger, and Longsword courses, Jessica Finley's Haupstucke...

The Swordsman's Companion

Hi! I got back from Mexico on Tuesday night. Oh my goddess, what a trip. It was a blast from start to finish- though some of that blasting came out of my rear end when my system finally protested the influx of amazing food. Montezuma’s revenge, baby. I’ve written up a pretty thorough review of the first week of the trip here: https://guywindsor.net/2024/09/viva-la-panoplia-y-viva-mexico/ I’m still processing the rest of the trip (and my antibiotics!), so will write it up for the blog later...

Chris Schweizer

Hi! As this goes out, we should have wrapped up the Panoplia Iberica, Mexico edition! And with any luck I’m swanning about Mexico city with a few days to see the place before we head off to Queretaro. If you’re on SwordPeople (and it would be great if you were!) you’ll have seen photos already. It’s a better venue for sharing as-it-happens stuff than an email list. I’m actually writing this last Tuesday, because I doubt I’ll have much time for typing while I’m away. This newsletter is going...

Hi! Right now you may be confused because I sent an email out yesterday announcing a few hours left to go on this launch... which hadn't started yet.This is because my assistant who normally does these things was away, so I scheduled all the launch emails myself, and hit the wrong button on the last one of them.Sorry. And, this is why I have an assistant!Now, on with the launch... At the end of June I went to Kansas… and came back with footage of a whole lot of my interpretation of Fiore’s Il...

Jane Strange

Hi! as this goes out I’m on my way to Stansted airport to fly to Berlin for the Swords of the Renaissance event, where I’m teaching three classes: Improve your Rapier fencing; Lessons from the Abrazare; and a short “break-out session” on fencing with the rapier and dagger. Should be lots of fun! I’ve attended the last two of these events, and am really looking forward to this one. Between the family trip to London and dashing off to Germany, I’ve been finishing up the video editing for the...

Hi, sorry to be the bearer of bad news. The Dardi article I posted about this morning- Michael Chidester, Josh Wiest, and David Biggs all got in touch to let me know that the institution and author apparently don't exist. It's almost certainly a hoax of some kind. Though why anyone would post such a thing on Academia.edu I have no idea. I've deleted the post wherever I can find it, and posted retractions. These things happen- but next time I'll check more carefully before posting stuff. Sorry...

Hi! On Swordpeople.com yesterday my friend and colleague David Biggs let us know that Italian academics lead by Professor Dottore Giovanni Rossi have found what appear to be parts of a book on swordsmanship by Filippo Dardi himself. Dardi is widely credited as being the founder or precursor of the Bolognese School of swordsmanship, and it's hard to imagine a more exciting discovery. The 11 fragments of parchment were found being used to pad the binding of a 19th century book. What the hell...