Hi,

Did a book launch ever go smoothly? I don’t think so. And the latest is no exception. There will be a few customer service emails going out in due course… but the Companion Volume to the Vadi Facsimile is now out, in the world, and hopefully making readers and Vadi practitioners happy as we speak.

And looky-look! it’s #1 in New Releases on the US Amazon store. New Releases in the Fencing category, not the entire store, because who can compete with gay hockey romance? But still nice to see.

Of course, I’d much rather you got it direct from me at the Swordschool Shop here.​

But to be honest, the way this year has gone, I’m happy wherever you get it from.

The key things that this volume adds to the previous Art of Sword Fighting in Earnest are:

• New sketches of every image, done by my daughter. This is an end-run around the National Library of Rome’s decision to enforce copyright in defiance of EU law. The sketches will also be free to download for your own projects soon…

• Video support for every play in the treatise. You don’t need to buy the book to get that though- you can find most of it on the Swordschool wiki already, and you can already find the video support for everything from folio 15v onwards by typing guywindsor.net/vadiXY into your browser. X is the folio number, Y is r or v (for recto and verso).
• Some minor updates to the academic stuff, notably (goddamn it) correcting one or two translation issues.

It’s designed to work in tandem with the free facsimile, so download that too if you don’t already have it.

If you already have the Art of Sword Fighting in Earnest you don’t need this book. But if you don’t have that one, or you do but still want this new one, then go ahead and buy it!

I’m making my way back from compassionate leave slowly, but it’s not in my nature to just sit around: I need to feel useful, and to get stuff done, even when I’m not very useful and getting not much done. A bit of antique chair restoration was just the thing. This poor old chair had two intact joints out of ten, and a massive break in one leg, but it’s now back being a proper chair again.

I wrote up the process on my blog here.

And I’m hoping to re-start the podcast next week!

In the meantime, take care my friends,

Guy
​