Ewart Oakeshott did more for the study of swords than anyone else in the 20th century. Oakeshott received no formal training in scholarship, nor did he have an academic position to lend weight to his opinions. His standing amongst his peers was entirely the product of decades of handling, owning, assessing and cataloguing swords.   

Without any academic training, but with boundless interest and energy, Oakeshott set about revolutionising how old weapons would be regarded and classified. His great insight was to treat the swords as practical weapons, forged and used by men to kill other men.

It might seem obvious now, but before Oakeshott the people responsible for looking after and curating collections of arms had seen them in terms of the history of art rather than as weapons, assigning ages and provenances to weapons based upon the decorative features of hilt and guard, pommel and scabbard rather than using the business end of the sword for classificatory purposes.

Oakeshott, on the other hand, visited museums and old houses, trying out those weapons he was allowed to handle. As he did so, he began to develop a physical understanding of the nature of the weapons he was wielding, getting a feel for balance, weight – the indefinable ‘life’ that marks out an exceptional weapon as something that seems alive in the hand.