Crystal and Silver in a Shakespearean accent, with Ben Crystal
In today’s episode we have another audiobook/interview mashup! The Paradoxes of Defence Audiobook Project involved me hiring two narrators to record George Silver’s 1599 book, Paradoxes of Defence. Ben Crystal is a Shakespearean actor, specialising in original pronunciation, and Jonathan Hartman is a modern dramatic actor who narrates in modern English. Renowned historical harpist Andrew […]
Boldly Going with Stephen Hand
Stephen Hand is a founder of the Stoccata School of Defence, author of several books, including English Swordsmanship: The True Fight of George Silver and Swordplay in the Age of Shakespeare, and he currently teaches at the Stoccata Branch in Hobart, Tasmania. He has also choreographed a sword fighting movie about Macbeth. We’ve known each […]
From Katanas to Creating the Metaverse, with Neal Stephenson
Neal Stephenson is a best-selling author, futurist, tech geek and swordsman whose works include Cryptonomicron, Seveneves, The Diamond Age, Snow Crash. He has also co-written several other books and graphic novels which we discuss in this episode. His latest book, Termination Shock goes into depth and detail about Sikh martial arts, which he had to […]
Pain is the best teacher, ideally somebody else’s. With Steaphen Fick
Today’s episode is with Steaphen Fick, who is a historical martial arts instructor and a fight choreographer, and also an old comrade in arms since we met in Edinburgh in the nineties. In fact, in this episode you will hear about a certain naked escapade involving swords in Finland in 1999. Here’s a picture of […]
Strategy and War with Lynette Nusbacher
Dr. Lynette Nusbacher is a Strategist and Devil’s Advocate. Her work has included being a logistics officer in the Canadian Armed Forces, a writer of books such as Bannockburn 1314, a lecturer at Reading University, the senior intelligence advisor to the UK Government Cabinet Office, as well as a TV presenter of various military history […]
Love Poems to Welsh Bucklers, with Paul Wagner
Paul Wagner has been involved in historical swordsmanship since the 1990s, and was present at the first night of the Stoccata School of Defence in 1998, a HEMA school which now has several branches in Australia. Paul is a Provost at Stoccata, teaching courses in Single Sword according to George Silver, Highland Broadsword according to […]
The Armoured Knight, with Dr Amanda Taylor
Dr. Amanda Taylor is a Research Fellow at the Oakeshott Institute and a Research Affiliate at the Center for Early Modern History, University of Minnesota. She is the author of several academic papers such as The Body of Law: Bodies, Combat and Rhetoric in Sir Thomas Mallory’s Quest for Justice and the forthcoming Domesticating War: […]
Shakespeare and Silver with Ben Crystal
Ben Crystal is an actor, author, producer, and explorer of original practices in Shakespeare rehearsal and production. In this episode we talk about Ben’s work in exploring how actors would have rehearsed, staged, and performed Shakespeare’s plays in the 16th century, and how the original rhymes and pronunciation would have sounded. It makes for a […]
Paradoxes of Defence- in audio!
In 1599 George Silver, gentleman, published his Paradoxes of Defence, which lambastes the outlandish (i.e. foreign) Italian rapier fencing that was becoming popular in England, and offers an extraordinary window into the medieval martial arts that the rapier was superceding. Whatever you think about Silver, or rapier fencing, his book is simply essential reading for all […]