Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The author's first book, Renaissance Swordsmanship was a shocker. This book is perhaps worse, and it's a mystery why it continues to receive favourable reviews. I guess you can fool some of the people, some of the time. The book covers two main weapons, longsword and sword and shield. As with his earlier work, both sections betray a very superficial understanding of any historical source. Despite showing some historical longsword guard positions, the author chooses to give his own guards, some of which resemble some historical guards, many of which don't (for example he claims that his hanging guard is the German Ochs or the Italian Posta di Donna, it doesn't really resemble Ochs and is completely different to Posta di Donna). Clements teaches the withdrawal of the arms when cutting, something which should offend anyone with the most rudimentary understanding of tempo. He teaches what are essentially modern sabre parries with the longsword, which if he understood German theory, he would know is exactly what you are told not to do. The techniques he shows bear no resemblance to anything that can be seen by looking at original manuals. The sword and shield section is even worse. Clements claims that his method of shield use is historical, yet it violates every principle of historical shield use. He holds the shield flat in front of the body, which authors like Marozzo tell you to do against polearms or multiple opponents, but NOT in single combat against another sword armed opponent. Clements' guards leave him vulnerable to having his shield bound by his opponent's. It also means that practically every cut he shows commits the cardinal sin of shield combat, exposing the arm in front of the shield. Lastly, Clements advocates moving the shield to block attacks, when historically combatants moved their bodies around large shields, not the shield around their body. All of the fundamentals that he could get wrong he does. While in the longsword section you can see some effort (albeit poor) to follow historical practice, it is clear that the sword and shield section was simply made up. It is ironic that the author spends so much time criticising others for making up techniques and then does it himself. This book was poorly researched and out of date when it was written, but it was the only book out there on medieval swordsmanship. This is no longer the case. There are a great many books, almost all of them a massive improvement on this sorry tome. For the longsword we have Christian Tobler's Secrets of German Medieval Swordsmanship, followed by his Fighting with the German Longsword. David Lindholm's Knightly art of Swordsmanship and Zabinski's Codex Wallerstein are both good works on the German system. There is also an excellent DVD by a German group called Ochs. The Italian system has Arte Gladiatoria, a translation of Vadi's manual, and the Swordsman's Companion, an excellent training manual. Sword and shield is less well covered. The Art of Medieval Swordsmanship translates the I.33 sword and buckler manual, while Medieval Sword and Shield explains it. There are also two excellent articles on the use of large shields in Spada and Spada II. Any of these books is preferable to Medieval Swordsmanship. It is shocking to think that less than ten years ago, academic standards in this field were so low that this dreadful book was actually considered acceptable. There are so many good books in this field, with more being produced every year. The thought of anyone buying Medieval Swordsmanship in 2006 is apalling.