Cutlasses. A lot of people talk about cutlasses, but nobody does anything about them. Few people in society practice a form of HEMA; and of those, even fewer are sailors. Which could account for the dearth of credible information on historical cutlass combat within our community. British Naval Swords & Swordsmanship brings to our attention…
Read More... from Book Review: “British Naval Swords & Swordsmanship” by McGrath & Barton
“They are stories about stories.” [1] It does my heart good when I hear competent people say that they’ve recreated the essence of some medieval martial art event to the best of their ability, because they followed the descriptions of medieval combat "exactly" from period texts. It’s a good ... start. But what if the…
Read More... from Book Review: "Deeds of Arms" by S. Muhlberger
♪"Stop, Hammer time!"♫ (Apologies to MC Hammer.) What is a cultural ‘artistic’ reference in our time, was an invitation to ‘bring it’ in medieval times. For nearly two centuries, the warhammer was a weapon of choice for mounted medieval armoured combat. However, there seems to be a distinct lack of (recorded) knowledge of the fighting techniques…
Read More... from Book Review: "Warhammer, the Forgotten Weapon" by James Roth
One of the most precious resources we have as martial artists is personal 'free time'. We never seem to have enough of it to do the things we ‘want’ to do. So is it inevitable that we will have to face the choice of either reading and studying any of the myriad books and journal…
Read More... from Book Review: "The Sword and the Centuries" by Hutton