York School of Defence

22/06/2026

I love private lessons. It's splendid being able to dig deep down and explore why the magic happens.

https://yorkschoolofdefence.co.uk/private-lessons/

18/06/2026

A reminder that this is a GenAI free zone. Art for our club is all done in-house by moi, and we work with local artists and friends to produce artwork for our events. Whilst our artists produce amazing work I will be the first to admit that my own efforts aren't the greatest. But that's okay, because an actual human took the time to do the thing (mistakes and all) rather than being lazy and actively contributing to the ensh*tification of society.

Generative AI is awful. Please stop using it. Every time you use AI to produce a poster, a meme, or a t-shirt design, or to generate a load of word salad for your latest post, you're using systems that have been trained on plagiarised art, and you're contributing massively to a worsening environmental crisis. And if you want a reason that may seem closer to home, see your laptop? Your mobile phone? Your console? Any consumer technology you have? Prices are skyrocketing thanks to AI data centres buying up hardware, very soon you will have to rent computing power rather than owning it and you've only yourselves to blame... "They will own nothing and be happy about it."

Put in the work yourself if you can't afford to hire someone to do it for you, and stop letting billionaire tech bros mansplain to you.

14/06/2026

Cutlass is featuring heavily in our workshops and classes at the moment, and it was absolutely wonderful to be invited to teach some cutlass drill to York Sea Cadets on Friday evening. A fantastic bunch with some real talented swordfolk coming through the ranks!

07/06/2026

Thanks to our first course booking up in record time we're hosting the same content taught by the same great instructor on a different night! We'll be strictly limited to ten spaces. This time the course will take place between 19:00 and 20:30 on a Wednesday! Drop me a message or head to www.yorkschoolofdefence.co.uk/longswordcourse if you'd like to book or find out more!

04/06/2026

We had an absolutely splendid time at Bladeworks 2026, it's one of our favourite events and we're so lucky to be invited back every year. It's full of fine folk and whimsy, and it has a splendidly chilly beach for splashing about on. If you haven't been I recommend adding it to your "must visit" list of events, especially if you enjoy the vibes of the things we do at the YSD! You'll find similarly minded people at the MCG who host Bladeworks.

This year we brought classes on savate (taught by Lauren), pugilism (taught by Mark) and some cutlass/boarding action work from moi.

We were looked after and made to feel welcome by everyone at the MCG, they prepared an amazing meal on the Saturday and provided us with food, a roof over our heads and some great things to do across the weekend.

Five swords out of five, will definitely stab again.

29/05/2026

29/05/2026

Prep for Bladeworks is going well...

21/05/2026

We've got a splendid eight week beginner's longsword course coming up! We kick off the 2nd of July and it's just eighty of your shiny pounds for lots of awesome tuition in medieval and early renaissance longsword fencing. Drop me a message or head to www.yorkschoolofdefence.co.uk/longswordcourse if you'd like to book or find out more!

13/05/2026

It's been incredibly rewarding to take a lot of non-wrestlers through their first bits of grappling in our 14th & 15th century class. Given the dire state of wrestling in HEMA it's been great to explore why doing the thing is not the same as understanding the thing, and why the only way to understand the thing is to try doing the thing in earnest against someone who doesn't want it done to them. Pressure test your stuff!

Top work all around.

07/05/2026

Fightcamp Skirmish was fantastic, great vibes as always. We were able to indulge our research interests with a class on walking stick/umbrella from Lauren and bowie knife from yours truly (I promise the book is in progress and will definitely happen!) Thanks to and for having us down to teach and help out, and to and Rob for the photos, and to everyone who took part for indulging us with fancy hats and fabulous skirts.