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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.

Michael Chidester
Featured Post

Because we Can Can Can!

Hi! Well, it seems people like the new Fiore facsimile and translation. Thanks to everyone who bought it, and everyone who took advantage of the birthday sale. People like you buying my books and courses literally feeds my children, so I do appreciate it. Unfortunately we have encountered a problem with the print files; some copies may have lines missing in the translated portion (it’s as if the printers cut off the last line of each text block. Weird!). We are working with the printers to...

Hi! First up- my previous email was clearly unclear, as some folk tried to use the discount code for the digital products (GUYSBIRTHDAY30) on the new print book. Sorry for the confusion. Basically, print costs are so high that offering discounts on print books is a bad idea, unless you're ordering a whole lot. But you can use the code to get 30% off any digital product at the Swordschool Shop, and on the Courses platform. I also misspelled "exciting", which my mum noticed immediately. Oh...

Hi! oh it’s an exiting time this week. We have a brand-new book out today, and, as it’s my birthday on Saturday (I'll be 51), we’re also running a birthday sale on all ebooks, audiobooks, and online courses. Hurrah! Just use the code GUYSBIRTHDAY30 to get 30% off at checkout. First up, the new book: I have completed my translation of Fiore’s Il Fior di Battaglia, as found in the Getty manuscript. You may recall I produced an affordable facsimile of the Getty a few years ago. Well, we’ve now...

Sydney Schwindt

Hi! I hope this finds you well. I’m cracking on with writing the new dagger book, From Medieval Manuscript to Modern Practice: the Dagger Techniques of Fiore dei Liberi. I already have all of the transcription, translation, and video clips done, so I’m now bashing the book into shape around them. It’s the sort of grunt writing work that is relatively straightforward, just very labour intensive. I’m also updating all of the video clips that go with From Medieval Manuscript to Modern Practice...

Jamie MacIver

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...