Swords of the Second World War

The training, the fight books and the weapons behind knighthood: what a young squire had to learn and how long it took. Finishes with supervised hands-on handling and Q&A. Ideal for schools, families and general audiences.

Buckles, arrowheads, chape fragments and sword furniture: how to recognise military finds, date them and understand the people who dropped them. Built for metal detecting clubs and archaeology societies.

From the sickle-sword and the battle axe to the composite bow and the chariot, this talk explores how ancient Egyptians fought. It draws on tomb paintings, surviving weapons and battle accounts such as Kadesh, and looks at the wrestling and stick fighting shown on tomb walls at Beni Hasan, a tradition that still survives in Egyptian tahtib today.

Swords, spears, polearms, the warbow and the armour built to defeat them. How weapons and armour drove each other forward, and what the surviving objects and fight books tell us about their use.

How Rome’s soldiers used the spear, and what the written sources, archaeology and practical reconstruction tell us about its place on the battlefield.