“Reading old books and looking at manuscript illustrations is great but what is it like to actually wear armour, use a lance from the back of a charging warhorse or stand in a shield wall? We aim to find out by trying.”
Jason Kingsley OBE
Josef Dawes of White Well Arms joins Jason to talk about the creation of the knight’s sword. Starting from a few billets of steel, Josef shows Jason some of the techniques to shape the metal and manipulate it to where it needs to be in order to create a well-balanced knightly weapon.
Modern History is a series that aims to investigate the reality of the past. We’re familiar with re-enactments of history in film and television but often those recreations are dramatized and designed for entertainment and spectacle. Jason aims to investigate how accurate those portrayals may be, by trying them out for himself and looking at them from a modern perspective. Perhaps by drawing parallels between the past and our modern lives, we can better understand what life might have been like for our ancestors.