After buying and surveying the first two volumes in this series, I had to buy volume III when it arrived in 2022. My copy of The Bartitsu Compendium, Volume 3: What Bartitsu Was and What it Can Be is a massive paperback measuring 8 5/16 inches by 11 11/16 inches, with 630 (!) black and white pages, in print-on-demand format. I wish I could have just bought PDFs of all three of these books!

This volume presents four parts: a “narrative social history” (pp 11-163), a collection of articles previously on the Web (pp 164-442), techniques and tactics (pp 443-545), and “20 years of revival” (pp 546-626). 

This book represents an amazing accomplishment by the author and his colleagues. They lost a lot of online content due to technical issues, but recovered and published that material here. I am a fan of publishing blog and related information in formats like this as an insurance policy against technical failures and “Web or link rot.”

I noted in the text the claim that Barton-Wright (1860-1951) apparently trained Shinden Fudo Ryu jujutsu for about 3 years with Terajima Kuniichiro and “took some lessons” with Kano starting around 1895, when the pair were each about 35 years old.

Here are a few sample pages for flavor:

If you are interested in Bartitsu, you need this book.