The Notebook and a Zibaldone Salad with Roland Allen

For transcriptions and more detailed shownotes, please go to: https://swordschool.shop/blogs/podcast/episode-201-the-notebook-and-a-zibaldone-salad-with-roland-allen 

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Roland Allen is the author of The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper. The book is about the development of the notebook (i.e. a book you write in yourself) in European history, and it covers everything from the development of paper as a cheaper thing to write on than vellum, to wax tablets, to Italian accounting practices, to Leonardo da Vinci's famous notebooks, to Darwin, to the modern Moleskine and where it actually comes from.

In our conversation we talk about the means, motive and opportunity that enabled Roland to write The Notebook, and the challenges of covering such an enormous topic: what had to be left out; and the power of holding a grudge. There’s also great advice for anyone writing any sort of book about how to incorporate cause and effect into your storytelling. Readers need reasons and consequences to stay engaged.

We talk about Roland’s favourite genre of notebook, the zibaldone, which existed in medieval Florence as a way for people to write down all the bits of literature they liked, local songs, recipes, events – anything notable was written down in a hodgepodge paper version of a mixtape. To connect this to fencing, it is similar to one of our oldest treatises, Manuscript 3227a, also known as the Döbringer manuscript. This is basically a zibaldone, with a section in it on fighting with a longsword. But it also has sections in it on other things like fireworks and recipes. 

There’s lots else to talk about, including our preferred brands of notebook, and our favourite paper.

Find out more about The Notebook on Roland’s website: https://roland-allen.com/