Guy Windsor's blog: articles on historical martial arts

Lenard Voelker: Gentleman, Scholar, and an inspirational Martial Artist.

10th January, 2025

In 2011 I dedicated my book The Medieval Dagger to “Lenard Voelker: Gentleman, Scholar, and an inspirational Martial Artist.”

A few days before Christmas I got a call from Lenard’s grandson Kyle to let me know that my old friend had died. ‘Old’ in both senses- we have been friends for over 20 years, and he was into his eighties. You may not know who he was, so I’ll sketch out for you the reasoning behind that dedication. It will give you a sense of the man as I knew him.

I first met Lenard at one of the early ISMAC events, probably in 2001. He was instantly identifiable by his profusion of white hair, and his posture- he was pretty tall, and a lifetime of politely stooping for us short-arses had left him a bit of a hunch. He was very easy to underestimate, a mistake I never made again after our first fencing match. Smallswords. But not the delicate stand-offish fencing that those who don’t understand smallswords might be thinking of. No. Lenard ‘fenced’ smallsword the same way he ‘sparred’ with a knife. A vicious flurry of aggression and speed, completely at odds with his usual gentle demeanour. Let me put it this way: fencing with Lenard was a pleasure and an education: but there’s no way in hell I’d ever want to fight him.

It says a great deal about the man that at the same event where we had a little ceremony presenting him with a sword celebrating his 50 years (so far) of training in martial arts, he paid me for a private lesson. I was about 30. He would have slaughtered me in any kind of fight, but he was happy to learn from anyone, and very excited by the growing field of historical martial arts. He epitomised the humility that is supposed to go along with being a martial artist, but very rarely does. Inspirational martial artist, indeed.

He was generous and kind in all sorts of ways. At (probably) the second event we were at together, he brought a couple of books for me. Just because he thought I might like them. And this became something of a ritual. We met at many events, and he would always have something I would never have thought to pick out for myself, but which were always interesting, and often useful. One such book was restauranteur Danny Meyer’s book Setting the Table. Another was Plato’s The Last Days of Socrates. I reciprocated with Ellis Amdur’s Duelling with O-Sensei, and others. What a scholar, with a breadth and depth of reading you don’t find often.

The last long conversation I had with him in person was in his garden, drinking beer and eating barbecue with him and his lovely wife Mai, and some friends, just chatting about martial arts and everything else, putting the Universe to rights. Even though we hadn’t seen each other in person for far too long, it was somehow entirely in Lenard’s character that the grandson he helped to raise would, in the midst of his own grief, take the time to call in person to let me know of his passing. What a gentleman.

Most of our in-person meetings occurred before social media was really a thing, so I don’t actually have any photos of us together. If you happen to have one, please share it with me.

2024 Roundup, and plans for 2025

30th December, 2024

7 Countries. 4 Continents. 6 books. Two online courses. And one really good idea (I think).

It’s kind of absurd to summarise an entire year in a single blog post, especially such a busy and yet somehow still productive year as the last 12 months have been, but I need to get a handle on what my actual choices were. It’s all very well to say you prioritise x or emphasise y, but looking back you may well find that you actually prioritised z.

It seems that this year I’ve prioritised pushing books out the door (sometimes faster than they should be), and travelling as much as I can handle. Leaving aside family travel (such as starting the year on holiday in Italy with my wife and kids, taking my wife to Porto for a weekend, and the whole family to Spain for a summer holiday, and visiting my mum in Scotland (which is a whole other country)), in 2024 I went to:

Helsinki, in February and again in May, teaching seminars for the Gladiolus School of Arms (which I’ll be doing again in mid-January 2025)
Singapore in April, to teach seminars for PHEMAS
Wellington, New Zealand, in April, to teach a seminar for a friend’s club (I segued through Melbourne on my way home to catch up with friends)
The USA: Lawrence, Kansas to shoot video with Jessica Finley, Madison Wisconsin to teach a couple of seminars, and Minneapolis likewise
Potsdam, Germany, for Swords of the Renaissance
Mexico City for the Panoplia Iberica, and then Queretaro for a smaller event.

That’s a total of 73 nights away from home for work trips. Damn. I’ve loved it, and will be doing some travelling in 2025, but both my daughters have major exams coming up in June (A-levels for one, GCSEs for the other), so I need to be home for much of at least the first half of the year.

Table of Contents

Publishing

In January 2024 I published From Your Head to Their Hands: how to write, publish, and market training manuals for historical martial artists. Perhaps the nichiest book I’ve ever written, but it was there in my head in between editing drafts of the wrestling book (see below), so I got it out of my head and into your hands. See what I did there?

In March I published the long-awaited and technically “first” volume in the From Medieval Manuscript to Modern Practice series: The Wrestling Techniques of Fiore dei Liberi. Only 4 years after what will become the third volume (The Longsword Techniques of Fiore dei Liberi). It took me that long because the pandemic stopped me from going to Kansas to shoot the supporting video material with Jessica Finley. Well, that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it. It was also just bloody hard to write.

The second volume (on the Dagger Techniques of Fiore dei Liberi) should be out in early 2025, and at that point I’ll re-cover the Wrestling and Longsword volumes and make them look and behave more like a book series.

Proof if ever you needed it that there’s no need to do things in order.

In August I published Get Them Moving: How to Teach Historical Martial Arts. This is another super-nichey book. I’m not aiming at the mass market here, just clearing things out of my head so I can get on with other things. Books do that: they simply insist on being written and published, and won’t let me alone until I’ve got them out the door.

I also managed to edit all the new material for my Medieval Dagger Course, which I had shot in Kansas. I also have a bunch of longsword material to publish, and an entire course on German Medieval Wrestling (Jessica Finley’s work).

In September I published the celebratory 20^th Anniversary edition of my first book, The Swordsman’s Companion, and I’ve made the ebook free on all platforms. The book is hopelessly out of date as regards interpretation, but it’s an interesting window into the state of the art as it was in 2004. And it got a lot of people into historical martial arts.

In November we published the magnificent facsimile of the Getty manuscript, with my complete translation. Unfortunately that ran into some bizarre technical problems after the first 50 or so orders had come through, so at the time of writing we are fixing the problem and reprinting the books. I also created a companion volume which includes the complete transcription as well; it’s not intended as a standalone, but it is finished and has been sent out to all the buyers of the facsimile, so I guess that counts as two more books, taking the year’s total to a somewhat absurd 6. If you consider that my first book came out 20 years ago, and in that time I’ve written and published about 18 books: a full third of them in this year alone.

Of course, publishing comes after writing, and a lot of this year’s output were mostly or at least partly written over the last few years; they just happened to be ready all at once.

My podcast The Sword Guy hit 200 episodes in December 2024, and I’ve decided to pause a while to think about what I want to do for the next 20, 50, or 100 episodes.

Business stuff

I had two main goals for 2024: to figure out how to open up my platform to other instructors, and to create partnerships with other businesses serving the HMA community. I’ve made progress on both those fronts.

Esko Ronimus’s course “Introduction to Bolognese Swordsmanship” went live on courses.swordschool.com in October this year. This is different to the collaborations I’ve done before (such as Jessica Finley’s Medieval Wrestling course) because I was not directly involved in creating it. I didn’t direct the shoot, edit the video, or take part in the production in any way. I just provided a platform to host it on, and some advice on structuring the course and marketing it. So far both Esko and I are happy with the results, and I’m open to requests from other instructors…

If you’ve bought a sword from Malleus Martialis in the past year you may well have got a discount code for one or other of my online courses, or a code to get one of my ebooks for free. This kind of thing is good for Malleus (they can offer more to their customers at no cost to themselves, and make an affiliate fee on any course sales), good for the customer (they get free or discounted stuff they are likely to be interested in), and me (I get some of the course sales money, and someone who may not know my work becomes familiar with it, and may go and buy a bunch more of my books). So if you’re in the business, and want to set something up, let me know.

Research stuff

This year there has been one significant change to my interpretation of Fiore’s Armizare: the three turns of the sword. This doesn’t change much about how we actually do things, but it affects the underlying theory behind the art, and solves a mystery that has been plaguing us for decades. Full credit to Dario Alberto Magnani. You can listen to the entire conversation here.

It also meant updating my translation of the Flower of Battle: I deleted one word. A very critical word. “Also”. Yes, it makes a difference.

Plans for 2025

I came back from Mexico with one clear vision of a problem to solve. Namely, I travel about a lot giving seminars, and so I get to see a lot of students, but only every now and then, and many of them I’ll never see again. This is unsatisfying. I don’t get to see the long-term effects of the things they have learned from me. I don’t get to see them develop over time. Of course there is some continuity, especially when I go back to teach at clubs regularly, but it’s not ideal for either me or the students.

So what to do about it? The thing that blows the students’ minds most consistently are insights into swordsmanship mechanics. Ask Leon in Mexico or Rigel in Singapore about the rapier guard quarta, and how stringering works. The look of utter startlement on students’ faces when they get it is the absolute best thing. I’m thinking about creating an online course that goes into the absolute fundamentals (ie the most important but least flashy) of how sword mechanics work, and making it free: but required for anyone signing up to one of my seminars when I travel. This will let me cover a lot more stuff in the class itself, and prepare them better to actually make use of the insights. And it will hopefully bring them more into my orbit, make them more likely to show up on swordpeople.com with good questions, more likely to come to the next seminar, etc.

I also want to create an online course on Vadi’s longsword (might as well shoot my interpretation of the entire manuscript while we’re at it), publish the dagger volume of From Medieval Manuscript to Modern Practice, maybe shoot the video for the armoured combat and/or mounted combat volumes, and finish The Armizare Workbook Part Two (which has been more than half written for over a year… but is still stuck in hard-drive purgatory). Part One came out in 2022, and I meant to get Part Two out in mid ’23. Oh well.

I’m planning to make all of the supporting video for From Medieval Manuscript to Modern Practice (so, clips of every play from Folio 1 to Folio 31v of the Getty ms) free online. They are currently only visible through the links in the books. But making them open to all should help my fellow scholars, and also provide advertising for the books. Another win-win.

The key thing to remember here is that planning is vital but plans are useless. There is no way to predict the future, and all sorts of things might get in the way of any or all of my intentions for the year. But having a think about what I want to accomplish, and why, makes it much more likely that I’ll be able to look back on 2025 with some degree of satisfaction. Let’s see what actually happens…

New Fiore Facsimile, and Guy's Birthday Sale

26th November, 2024

It’s an exiting time this week. We have a brand-new book out today, and, as it’s my birthday on Saturday (I'll be 51), we’re also running a birthday sale on all ebooks, audiobooks, and online courses. Hurrah! Just use the code GUYSBIRTHDAY30 to get 30% off at checkout (code is valid for all digital products- not print books or t-shirts).

First up, 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:

A page from the translation laid out on the facsimile — Sample page from part 2

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:

Glorious Getty!

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

Viva México, part two: the amazing food! and some tips for travellers

4th November, 2024

You may recall that my recent trip to Mexico blew me away. What a country, what people.

And yes, what food.

I’ve had lots of “Mexican” food before: some awesome, some so-so. But nothing prepared me for the breadth and depth of the Mexican food experience. I ate everywhere from people’s homes, to roadside shacks, to decent restaurants, and it was all excellent. I’ll kick off this post with some basic traveller advice on not getting sick while travelling to such places, then just go through the dishes I experienced in order. With photos!

Table of Contents

Traveller’s Tips

1. Do not drink the tap water. At all, ever. I’d recommend brushing your teeth in filtered water, and hold a mouthful of filtered water in your mouth when having a shower, to prevent you accidentally swallowing anything. Spit it out when you’re done in the shower.

2. Suero. This is a mix of rehydration salts that you can get at any pharmacy. Mix a packet in with a litre of filtered water to rehydrate if you do get sick. Throw away any undrunk mixture after 24 hours.

3. Probiotics. Much of the intestinal distress associated with travelling to Mexico comes from a fight between your existing gut biome, and the bacteria you’re exposed to while you’re there. They are not friends, and those Mexicans fight dirty. So start taking probiotics before you go, and keep taking them while you’re there, whether you feel well or not. I’m quite impressed with the Enterogermina ampoules that I got in Mexico, and with the Probio 7 50+ that I got when I got home.

For thoughts on managing jet lag, see here.

Rusa, or agua minerale preparada

This is just a glass of mineral water, with lime juice, and salt around the rim of the glass. Putting the salt round the glass like that means you can take as much or as little of it as you want/need. And the lime juice is great for vitamin C and digestion. Honestly, why drink plain water ever again? It's available just about everywhere, and superb for keeping you hydrated- much better than plain water would be. I failed to take a photo of it, sorry.

Enmoladas

My first meal in Mexico was breakfast enmoladas. These were stunningly good. They look like a dessert, but they’re not. They are tortillas stuffed with chicken, in a mole, which is based on cocoa, but is not what most people think of as chocolate. It’s a bit spicy, a bit savoury, a bit umami, a thousand percent delicious. This was served with coffee and carrot juice.

Pozole

This is a traditional Aztec dish, a kind of spicy stew. They have changed one major ingredient though. It used to be made with the flesh of your enemies, but is now made with pork. It’s one of those classic dishes which get fought over- which part of Mexico has the best pozole? I couldn’t possibly say- I had it a couple of times, and they were differently fabulous. Pairs well with a dark Modelo.

Chile en Nogada

This dish is only available for a short time each year, which happens to coincide with Mexican independence day (September 16^th). The red, white, and green of the dish represent the colours on the Mexican flag. The large poblano chile is stuffed with meat and fruit, and covered in the white walnut sauce. It’s another somewhat sweet, somewhat umami, utterly divine dish.

Elote

Mexican cuisine is based on corn the way European cuisine is based on wheat. It’s everywhere, and sometimes it’s just on its own, boiled or grilled over charcoal from a roadside cart, late at night, with friends. I had the version with chilli powder and lime. My lips stung for ages, but it was totally worth it.

Barbacoa

This is not barbecue, as in meat grilled over charcoal or smoked. This is meat that it soft and juicy and tender from being roasted in a pit in the ground, much like a Hawaian imu. You can also do it in the oven. I failed to take a picture because I was too busy eating it.

Tetelas con chapulines

This is a Oaxacan delicacy. A tetela is a triangular folded tortilla, stuffed with food. In this case, crickets. They are slightly spicy, quite umami, and delicious. I also had tetelas stuffed with tasajo (a kind of dried meat), and huitlacoche, which is a mushroom that only grows on corn.

I didn’t take pictures of the quesadillas con carnitas, nor the rose-petal flavoured ice-cream. Nor so many other culinary delights. And, let the record state, the only time I did actually get sick was after eating at a place that specialised in American-style food (it was open and close by, no other reason to go there).

It’s funny to think that Mexican food outside Mexico is mostly tacos and burritos. Which is like Italian food outside Italy being mostly pizza and pasta. Yes, there’s a lot of both in Italy, but they are just the tip of a gastronomic iceberg. Just so with Mexico. While there is a lot of pork involved, there is also a huge tradition of vegetarian food (such as the tetelas con huitlacoche). And yes there’s a lot of corn there too, but not in the chiles en nogada.

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