Naval & Military Press HANDS OFF!: SELF-DEFENCE FOR WOMEN

The sketches and black and white photos date this book, as well as the old fashioned phrasing --- *but the defense moves never go out of date*. One does not need years of training to fight back --- just practice of these common sense techniques. A nice addition to Defendu by the same author.

very simple, like a magazine, some pictures and explanations. very expensive for what it really is

Very brief and to the point. Certainly not over complicated. Half the contents deals with smashing an umbrella into the assailant’s face - sound advice for the fairer sex in any age.

Alot of the information in this book is very easy to pull off and scientifically correct. The chin jab will in fact knock out your opponent so do be careful! The only thing I found dumb was the matchbox to the throat as matchboxes aren't made of steel anymore, neither are the common. However a cellphone might be used in its place idk.Good book overall. Hope it stays available for a long time.

The author joined the Shanghai municipal police from the Royal Marines around 1907 and having become fascinated by oriental martial arts, trained with the best of their generation. He adapted techniques from what he learned and set them out in strict manual format: this book, which I think is his last, is directed specifically at women and contains all the techniques that later feminist authors think they discovered decades later.Fairburn couldn't write, in the sense that stringing words together to make an entertaining read wasn't his style. Every one of his books is a manual, straight in, lesson one, technique one and through. What's different about this manual to his others is that he's reinvented the techniques specifically for women.So the difference? Men have greater upper body strength, bigger feet and usually are better balanced. Women are way more flexible, more agile and usually quicker to react. In this book, Fairburn explores and exploits women's strengths, the better for them to deploy what they've got against a male opponent. First published in 1942, it's not hard to guess who he intended this book for. Hugh Verity (author of 'we landed by moonlight') flew clandestine Lysander aircraft to France in the war and reports collecting a woman who attacked him with an umbrella. He thinks she was Violette Szabo, SOE; the umbrella attack is in Fairburn's book.The principles are quite simple; did anyone tell you at school what your weaknesses were and that you should concentrate on them to come up to par? Maybe, but as soon as you left school, someone should have told you to look to your strengths for your future. Fighting is the same; no point trying to use a technique that's useless to you. Do something effective instead. The techniques taught to men involve balance, taking an opponent off balance and using upper body strength to manipulate the opponent into vulnerability. That doesn't work for women, so Fairburn concentrates on impact techniques; women are to use their flexibility to get their own bodies out of the way of the parts of a man's body they want to hit: then get stuck in to hitting, with relish.This edition was published by Paladin Press in 2004. Wartime editions are hens teeth. I got a four hundred year old 'breeches' bible with more ease. So this edition fills a gap in anyone's library. Whichever self defence technique you choose to learn, unarmed or using a weapon of convenience, your instructor, whether he acknowledges it or not, owes just about everything in his skills set to W E Fairburn.