Hi!

So you made it through the launch-process winnowing, well done! All in all, the launch sequence for Von Baumann triggered 59 unsubscribes, which is about normal- the average number of unsubscribes per newsletter email is about 5. And 116 people chose to click the ‘don’t send me any of that German wrestling stuff!’ link, thus avoiding the temptation to unsubscribe altogether. Hurrah!

Other than the excellent folk who chose to buy the course, my favourite response to the launch was this, from Steve: “Thank you, this sounds awesome but I already know German jiu-jitsu.”

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The video is priceless.

Speaking of courses, I have now added Esko Ronimus’s “Introduction to Bolognese Swordsmanship: dall’Agocchie's Varying Guards Form” course to the Mastering the Art of Arms subscription package on both swordpeople.com and courses.swordschool.com. If you’re already subscribed, it should be there in your dashboard already. And if not, feel free!

So what of the other projects?

The Fiore Facsimile

We are still fighting with the printers to get the facsimile printing correctly. It really doesn’t help that it took them seven days to even reply unhelpfully to my last email. Here’s the stack of unsatisfactory proofs that we’ve generated so far…

Each one costing a chunk of change to print and ship.

But we will get there. Even if I have to show up at the printers and hold them at swords-point until they get it right.

Drawing inspiration

I managed to take some time to go to London to catch the Michaelangelo, Leonardo, and Raphael exhibition at the Royal Academy. It was in many ways epic and splendid, with works that I’ve never seen before. The exhibition focussed on the preparatory sketches for works that were often never completed, and I have a list of possible blog posts to write about what I saw there. Highlights for me included seeing a load of stortas in use in an unknown Italian artist’s sketch, enlarged and retouched by Rubens no less, of Leonardo’s sketch for The Battle of Anghiari, which was a painting intended for the Palazzo Vecchio, in Florence, but as far as we know it was never completed.

Do you recall my waxing lyrical about The Notebook by Roland Allen? It has a whole chapter on Leonardo’s notebooks, and they had one at the Royal Academy:

This one is known as Manuscript K, and it’s tiny (128mm by 96 by 65). I thought the binding was a bit dodgy (ie modern) when I saw it, and it turns out it’s a compilation of three notebooks bound together sometime later, probably in the 1600s. The man himself didn’t have his notebooks bound in red leather, and they were much slimmer, so easier to pocket.

My favourite Leonardo sketch in the whole exhibition was this one:

Specifically the horse on the bottom right. Why? Because it’s crap. I mean really, any artistically inclined 8 year old could draw a better horse. Leonardo is without question one of the greatest artists the world has ever known. And every now and then he’d draw a crap horse. I love it. Doesn’t that give you permission to have a go, at whatever it is you’re trying to do?

Of course, he never published a crap drawing. But he made them in practice.

Which reminds me of this page here, from Michelangelo’s sketches:

Look at how much practice he did for his drawings, paintings, and sculptures (this one includes preparatory work for his famous Taddeo Tondo, also on display in this exhibition).

If it takes Michael-fucking-angelo multiple attempts to get a figure right, doesn’t that inspire you to keep going past the occasional failure?

Notebook madness

Incidentally, harking back to notebooks: my cataloguing project is proceeding pretty well, and I’m coming across all sorts of things I’d forgotten. Kristian Ruokonen’s class leader exam notes, for instance. And notes for what would become Get Them Moving: how to teach historical martial arts, dating back to 2015! I had completely forgotten that I was trying to write that book ten years ago, and gave up on it because I wasn’t ready yet. I wondered why it came so easy when I went to write it in 2023.

What I’m reading

Have you seen the BBC series Rogue Heroes, about the early days of the Special Air Service? It’s loosely based on what actually happened, as described in Rogue Heroes, by Ben Macintyre. This is the first history of the WWII years of the SAS that actually draws on their own War Diary (which has been faithfully reproduced by Extraordinary Editions, the same company that made the stunning Royal Armouries MS I.33 reproduction and they have some in stock at around £1-2000. Money well spent, if I had it. Go buy all my courses please!!).

The book is very good, and feels well-balanced. Often these sorts of books are hagiographical fanboy rubbish, but Macintyre sees the flaws as well as the strengths of these extraordinary soldiers. I’d definitely recommend this if you’re interested in that period of military history.

The TV show? I loved it. But as it clearly states in every episode: "This is not a history lesson". It always errs on the side of the better story over the literal truth. Watch it the same way you’d watch a King Arthur show.

When I came back from Finland I brought a horrible cold with me, and spent a couple of weeks shaking it off. While it was at its nasty peak I didn’t have the energy for anything serious, but Sebastian Faulks’ homage to P.G. Wodehouse Jeeves and the Wedding Bells hit just the spot. It’s classically Wodehousian, with the tropes any Jeeves fan would expect, done artfully and affectionately. Very often I find that these kinds of homages just don’t work because my reading of the originals is very different to the new author’s, but in this case I think Faulks nailed it. Lots of gentle fun. If you like the originals, try it.

When mostly recovered I started on The Steel Remains, by Joe Abercrombie. It’s fantasy in the same sort of vein as Game of Thrones, but (imho) way better. So good in fact that I scrambled through the first 900 page volume, and have almost finished the second! There is just one thing I want to take Joe aside and whisper in his ear about. Swords do not make a ringing sound when you draw them from a scabbard. They just don’t. I can accept the magic, and the fights against unlikely odds, and all the rest. But can we please never ever come across that Hollywood nonsense ever again?

If you can get past the noisy swords, this is classic stuff. My favourite character is probably Ferro.

cheers,

Guy