Self-Defence for Women and Girls

Twenty practical methods of escape and counter-attack, set down by the British officer who trained the commandos of the Second World War, for readers with no fighting background at all.

Self-Defence for Women and Girls turns the author's hard experience into plain steps: how to break a wrist hold, get out of a bear hug or a strangle, deal with an attacker who seizes your coat or your hair, and free yourself when a car pulls up beside you. Photographs carry the reader through each movement.

The book appeared while British women were doing night shifts, walking home through the blackout, and serving in the auxiliary services, and the tone matters: Fairbairn assumes his reader is lighter and slower than the man in front of her, and he never once suggests she brought the trouble on herself. It survives as both a founding text of modern unarmed close-quarters instruction and a small, sharp piece of home-front life.

This edition features:

• The complete text of Fairbairn's manual, published as British women took on wartime work
• Twenty numbered methods, from wrist holds and bear hugs to being seized in a stationary car
• Step-by-step photographic sequences showing every hold, break, and blow from the defender's point of view
• Written by the instructor of the wartime commandos and co-designer of a famous fighting knife
• A clear starting point for beginners and a primary source for students of unarmed fighting