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The Bastard sword always gets attention. The name originates from the French term epee batarde which refers to a hand and a half sword or a longsword. The word Bastard was given to it due to its irregular appearance - the sword's tang and grip were made to be effective with one hand but long enough to accommodate two hands, providing better leverage and more power. Although this made the sword more versatile it also made it difficult to categoriz...

As professional swordsmanship teacher, there is a simple question that I'm often asked: why the sword? The meaning of the question is more or less asking how a long-bladed weapon came to exist in so many different forms to become so widespread and valued by fighting men throughout history? It's not an easy question to answer in brief. It's a matter that involves many inter-connected elements of warfare, close combat tactics, metallurgy, physics,...

Food in the Middle Ages was not very dissimilar to what we have today, though there was a distinct difference in food of the rich and the poor, especially during harvest or extreme circumstances like famine.What of medieval utensils then? It is quite ironic that notwithstanding evolution and modern-day sophistication, we still love to eat with our fingers. Our ancestors were high-level practitioners of that art. They had no choice. The fork came...