Hi!

Home at last! I left Melbourne on Monday and arrived home about 30 hours later, last night. So if this isn’t the classiest prose you ever read from me, forgive me. I spent the longest leg of the journey (14 hours non-stop from Singapore to London) watching the whole of season 1 of the Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon, and still had time for a long nap and an episode or two of other things. I’ve got to say, that franchise has simply the worst sword training scenes in televisual history. It’s all 100% wild swings, that if they weren’t dodged or parried would take your head off. Ugh. If you’ve ever seen a really good sword training scene, let me know about it.

I don’t even try to work on aeroplanes: the ergonomics are impossible, and the environment is just awful for getting any real thinking done. Maybe when one or other of my books does a Harry Potter and I’m flying first class that’ll change, but I’m not holding my breath.

Except when required for breathing exercises, of course.

In my last email I had just arrived in Middle Earth (aka Aoteroa, or New Zealand), where I made some new friends…

And was taken round Weta Workshops by Peter Lyon himself, whom you may recall from episode 93 of the podcast, though I suppose his main claim to fame is making all the swords for the Lord of The Rings trilogy (and a bunch of other movies). We went round on the public tour first, which was really fun: 90 minutes flew by, and though you can’t take photos for most of it, or touch anything, there’s a bit where you can. Hellboy? I think so…

Then we went to lunch, and then the real fun began. The tour is good, but oh my god, the actual behind-the-scenes is something else again. The place is festooned with stuff you might recognise, and you can poke and prod as much as you want (well, I did, and nobody dragged me away). So I’ve now seen the inside of Theoden’s armour. Sadly still no photos, but we’re getting there…

To the armoury itself, where Peter makes swords with Chris Menges. We were in there for a good couple of hours, talking swords, and fiddling with bits of metal. Recall the extraordinary Snow Crash sword that went for hundreds of thousands at Sotheby’s last year? Chris made that, and we were fiddling with the left-over bits for ages.

And there was a wall of swords I could actually play with. The “hero” swords from Lord of the Rings. “Hero” swords are the maximally realistic proper steel swords they use for close-ups, rather than the aluminium or latex ones they use for stunts and other stuff.

I can confirm that they are all really nice swords, but the one I’m holding (Strider’s sword) was a real delight; a beautifully balanced longsword that would do very well for training Fiore. That’s Peter standing next to me, holding Anduril. Which he made.

I was actually there to work, honest. Over the weekend I taught two seminars, a rapier class on Saturday, and longsword on Sunday, in both cases emphasising how to teach. The students had widely varying experience, from decades to months, but were consistently delightful to have in class.

Very many thanks to Agate Ponder-Sutton who organised the seminars, and Stephen Mulholland (who needs to be photoshopped into this picture!), who hosted us in his excellent purpose-built training facility on his farm (where I met my alpaca friends above).

And in the evenings, why yes, some Audatia was played. I mean, why not? Haden Parkes and I have played a bit over zoom during the pandemic, but it’s even better in person.

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I dropped in on Melbourne sort of on the way home (it’s common to change planes in Oz on the way), and spend some time honing some real swordfighting skills. Finally, a worthy opponent!!

And now for something completely different:

In an entirely unrelated area: a while ago I was contacted by Shepherd, a company that tries to help authors sell books by creating curated book lists (which is free for the author, and free for the readers: I think they make money with affiliate link book sales). They asked me to put together a list of five books related to my From Your Head to Their Hands (I’ve no idea how they came across it- so far it’s barely sold anything outside of swordschool.shop). I liked the idea, and came up with five titles of books I’ve found really helpful as an author. The list title is: “The best books on becoming an effective writer without wrecking your body or abandoning your ethics”, and you can find my list here: https://shepherd.com/best-books/becoming-an-effective-writer​

This week on The Sword Guy: Swords for all humanity, with Janna Datahan

Janna Datahan was born and raised in the Philippines and is currently living in the United States. She's a mother, a published poet, a fibre artist and an aesthetician. Janna discovered Historical European Martial Arts in late 2019 and found her way into the supportive arms of the sword community during the pandemic. She is an active tournament competitor and event organiser. She also hosts a podcast called Swords Against Humanity, a platform she uses to advocate for underrepresented voices in Historical European Martial Arts.

In this episode, Janna explains how she got into HEMA and the support she has received from the community. As a 4’10” woman of colour, Janna didn’t see many people who looked like her when she first started, and so being ‘adopted’ by Fran Lacuata opened up a platform for Janna to start her podcast and also become the social media liaison for the HEMA Alliance.

We talk quite a bit about tournaments – the good, the bad and the ugly, and Janna has ideas on the sorts of event that she would like to attend and how resources within HEMA could be better spent to improve the art.

Of course, as a person of non-average size, the topic of kit comes up, especially gauntlets. There’s also a bit of chat about touring Europe to visit castles and trebuchets, viral crochet patterns, and rage cleaning.

You can find the episode here:

yours,

Guy

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