English Swordsmanship The True Fight of George Silver

George Silver was one of the most significant writers in the history of Western swordsmanship. Best known for his distrust of Italian rapier fencing, this suspicion led him to document the system of swordsmanship practiced by the English gentry and nobility before the advent of the rapier. Looking back to earlier times, Silver described a system that in many fundamentals was still medieval, but he did so with early modern precision. Fearful that his countrymen were forgetting the basics of swordsmanship, Silver described these in greater detail than perhaps any author before or since. What emerges is a simple and powerful, yet deep and subtle style, heavily based on natural body movements and designed to work under the stress of real combat. Book jacket.Hand, Stephen is the author of 'English Swordsmanship The True Fight of George Silver' with ISBN 9781891448270 and ISBN 1891448277.