This lively and deeply researched history - the first of its kind - goes beyond the great names and moments to explain how British sport has changed since 1800, and what it has meant to ordinary people. It shows how the way we play reflects not just our lives as citizens of a predominantlyurban and industrial world, but what is especially distinctive about British sport. Innovators in abandoning traditional, often brutal sports, and in establishing a code of `fair play', the British were also pioneers in popular sports and in the promotion of organized spectator events.Modern media coverage of sport, gambling, violence and attitudes towards it, nationalism, and the role of sport in sustaining male identity are also explored, and the book is rich in illuminating and entertaining anecdotes, which it combines with a serious historical understanding of a fascinatingsubject.

Volume three of a bibliography documenting all that has been written in the English language on the history of sport and physical education in Britain. It lists all secondary source material including reference works, in a classified order to meet the needs of the sports historian.

Many of the sports that have spread across the world, from athletics and boxing to golf and tennis, had their origins in nineteenth-century Britain. They were exported around the world by the British Empire, and Britain's influence in the world led to many of its sports being adopted in other countries. (Americans, however, liked to show their independence by rejecting cricket for baseball.) The Victorians and Sport is a highly readable account of the role sport played in both Victorian Britain and its empire. Major sports attracted mass followings and were widely reported in the press. Great sporting celebrities, such as the cricketer Dr W.G. Grace, were the best-known people in the country, and sporting rivalries provoked strong loyalties and passionate emotions. Mike Huggins provides fascinating details of individual sports and sportsmen. He also shows how sport was an important part of society and of many people's lives.

Americans may like to think they invented baseball (even if Jane Austen wrote about it decades earlier). And the French might be proud of founding the modern Olympics (when, in fact, a Shropshire doctor beat them to it by forty years). BUT IT WAS THE BRITISH THAT GAVE SPORT TO THE WORLD. From the beginnings of 'the beautiful game' - raucous matches of folk football with hundreds of players on each side - to the original bowls - a thin excuse for drunkenness and gambling - games grew into sports here in Great Britain. And in Can We Have Our Balls Back, Please? Julian Norridge tells their stories with wit and good humour. Including all the many sports we Brits have to be proud of - boxing, horse racing, cricket, football, rugby, hockey, lawn tennis (nearly called 'sphairistike') and more - and even those few that got away, this is everything you need to know about the very British love of sports and all the great games it's produced. Because, even if we rarely win them, it's good to know we invented them.

In this innovative study, Patrick Ismond provides an analysis of the issue of racism within British sport. It presents a number of theoretical positions regarding race, racism and sport, before providing a background history of the involvement of minority ethnic communities. Much detailed primary research is used to inform interesting discussions concerning racism in sport and its relationship to ethnicity, identity and notions of Englishness and Britishness. The study also includes a valuable analysis of sexism in sport, and the discrimination suffered by minority ethnic sportswomen.

Tells the story of the changing relationship between sport and religion from 1800 to the present day Both religion and sport stir deep emotions, shape identities, and inspire powerful loyalties. They have sometimes been in competition for people's resources of time and money, but can also be mutually supportive. We live in a world where sport seems to be everywhere. Not only is there saturation media coverage but governments extol the benefits of sport for nation and individual, and in 2019 the Church of England appointed a Bishop for Sport. The religious world has not always looked so kindly on sport. In the early nineteenth century, Evangelical Christians led campaigns to ban sports deemed cruel, brutal or disorderly. But from the 1850s Christian and other religious leaders turned from attacking 'bad' sports to promoting 'good' ones. The pace of change accelerated in the 1960s, as commercialization of sport intensified and Sunday sport became established, while the world of religion was transformed by increasing secularization, a resurgent Evangelicalism, and the growth of a multi-faith society. This is the first book to tell this story, and while its principal focus is on Christianity, there is additional coverage of Judaism and Islam, as there is of those - from Victorian sporting gentry to present-day football fans and marathon runners - for whom sport is itself a religion.