​

Hi!

I was in London a couple of weeks ago for a family reunion, and took the opportunity to wiggle along for another DEXA scan. My last was a year ago. On the positive side, I’ve put on about 2.4kg of ‘lean tissue’ (the scan can identify fat, bone, and ‘lean tissue’, which is everything else), mostly in the upper torso. So all that weight training and eating protein is paying off. And my overall fat percentage has come down from 24.8% in May 2024, to 21.5% now. Great.

But my genetics put the remaining fat mostly in my viscera, the absolutely worst place to have it. Subcutaneous fat isn’t such a big health problem, in reasonable amounts. But visceral fat is bad for inflammation, blood lipids, diabetes risk, the works. And it seems that’s where I store it. So I’m taking 100 days off alcohol, starting on August 19th. I’ve written up a great long blog post with all the details (the pros and cons, why alcohol specifically, the scan results, everything) on my blog here. Feel free to share, as always.

From Medieval Manuscript to Modern Practice: the Dagger Techniques of Fiore dei Liberi update

It’s the absolute worst bit about writing a book. The pernickety editing, getting it ready for the professional editor. Pro tip: do all the editing you can before the professional sees it. The less of the basic stuff they have to do, the more time they have to work on the finer details. But that’s what I need to get done before heading off to Berlin this weekend for the awesome Swords of the Renaissance where I'm teaching classes on Capoferro, Vadi, and how to prevent student attrition.

I’m working with a new editor, and my previous layout artist has retired, so I’m working with a new one of those too. These quite rightly charge properly for their professional services, which will make a giant hole in my cash flow. I could run a crowd-funding campaign, I suppose, but I’d rather just open the book up for pre-orders.

The book is written (as you can see). All the images are done (there are a couple of photos I want to re-shoot, but the book could go out just fine with what we have). And all the videos are shot, edited, and uploaded: the only task left there is to create the re-directable links that are in the book and target the correct videos on vimeo. So, even if I were to get hit by a bus (should have parried), everything is in place for the book to be published once the editor has done his job, and the designer has done hers.

We’ll get the pre-orders page up shortly, so expect an extra email next week when it goes live.

This brings me on to postage to the USA:

Posting to the USA

Japan, Germany, New Zealand, and a bunch of other countries (including Guernsey!) have ceased posting things to the USA because of the tariffs insanity. Books are fortunately exempt from tariffs, so even though the usual cheaper postage options for specialised books that are only printed in the UK (such as the spiral bound workbooks) have been suspended, there are still some options. But all of the regular hardbacks and paperbacks that are ordered in the USA are printed there, with local shipping. So other than the increased costs of paper, which so far has not forced me to raise prices, readers in the USA can get their books the same as ever before. Phew! If you’re in any doubt about whether a particular product is printed in the USA or UK, just email me and ask.

Vadi Longsword video update

The video 07.03 Drill 2 from Chapter 11 which is part of the Vadi Longsword Course had a minor editing fail at the end, which was spotted and kindly pointed out to me (by the new editor no less!). It’s fixed on all platforms. This is a good reminder that a) nobody’s perfect, and b) letting me know when there’s a mistake somewhere gets it fixed asap.

The Sword Guy Season 2

The first episode of season 2 of the podcast will air on September 5th (next week!) with my interview with Roland Allen, author of my favourite book of the year so far, The Notebook, a history of thinking on paper. Hurrah! I suggest subscribing to the show so it will automatically update in your feed.

What do we think of King and Conqueror?

I started watching King and Conqueror this week, on the BBC. I’m not sure how much I like it. The creators seem to think that people a thousand years ago didn’t know how to wash their faces, unless they’re super-posh. But proper action heroes never wash! And it does go with a bit too much low-light filters. The Dark Ages were actually Dark, right?

But there seems to be some effort paid to the material culture (I only saw a few totally wrong swords), and because it’s out of my period of expertise, I probably missed a bunch of stuff. Which is all to the good. The series is set in the years leading up to the Battle of Hastings (1066), when William the Conqueror came over the channel and, well, conquered England. Without which we’d all still be speaking German, so it wasn’t all bad.

William and Harold probably did meet in the years before the invasion, and there’s an interesting article on the historical accuracy of the plot on History Extra by Prof. Tom Licence of the University of East Anglia, which is relatively positive.

But I know there’s a lot of history nerds on my email list, so, what do you all think? I’m on the fence…

cheers,

Guy