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.
New Fiore translation, and birthday sale reminder
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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 dear. I promise my books are much more carefully edited than my emails. 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 produced an updated version, that reproduces the Getty manuscript in its entirety, in full colour, and as close as possible to the size of the original. But there’s a twist: The second half of this volume is a second reproduction of the manuscript with the original Italian text replaced by my English translation. This recreates the experience of reading the original Italian as closely as possible. The book also includes an introduction to Fiore and his life and times, the provenance of the manuscript, and suggestions for further study. This way, you get the original, and the translation, in one volume… for the same price as the original facsimile-only edition. Because we can. And it’s my birthday. The excellent Katie Mackenzie has done a gorgeous job on the cover and layout: The translation section includes tags on the pages so you can find the section you want from the page edges. You can find it here:
I don’t know if the book will get to you in time for Christmas- much depends on how busy the printer is, and the shipping options you select at checkout. But we’ve done our best to get it out fast enough that there’s a fair chance… You can also get an audiobook of me reading my translation (remember to use your discount code!) here. This birthday sale will end on Tuesday December 3rd, so timing is everything… The code: GUYSBIRTHDAY30 Ebooks and audiobooks: https://swordschool.shop Courses: https://courses.swordschool.com yours, Guy |
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.
BOOKS PODCAST COURSES COMMUNITY BLOG Hi! I’ve been in a bit of a zine-making frenzy this week. It started innocently enough. I’ve been updating the Swordschool Wiki, and we’ve now reached a major milestone: every one of Fiore’s 70+ dagger plays now has its own page, with the image from the Getty manuscript, my translation, and my interpretation on video. You can explore the whole lot here, along with a goodly chunk of the longsword plays, and all of the abrazare. Fiore on the Wiki Working...
BOOKS PODCAST COURSES COMMUNITY BLOG Hi! Two quick updates that couldn’t wait until next week… Last Saturday’s Smallsword webinar went really well, with excellent questions and discussion from everyone who attended. There’s one more live session tomorrow morning (8am UK time), so if you’ve been thinking about upping your smallsword game, there’s still time to join us. One of the strongest pieces of feedback was that people wanted another practical webinar—this time on Point Control. So I’ve...
BOOKS PODCAST COURSES COMMUNITY BLOG Hi, Over the last couple of weeks I have been diving into the “organise The Sword Guy material” project. It really needs a better working title. I’m leaning towards “Lessons from The Sword Guy”, what do you think? It is turning into a much harder project than I anticipated. It turns out 2.4 million words is a bit much for most search functions to actually search reliably! I had to learn how to generate a markup file of all 200 or so transcripts. And even...