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This Sporting Life offers an important view of England's cultural history through its sporting pursuits, carrying the reader to a match or a hunt or a fight, viscerally drawing a portrait of the sounds and smells, and showing that sport has been as important in defining British culture as gender, politics, education, class, and religion.
List of contents
- Introduction
- Ch 1 Land of Liberty
- Ch 2 'Bonny Moor Hen'
- Ch 3 Bottom
- Ch 4 Custom
- Ch 5 Home
- Ch 6 New Moral Worlds
- Ch 7 Bloods
- Ch 8 Moderns
- Conclusion
About the author
Robert Colls is Professor of History at the International Centre for Sports History and Culture at De Montfort University, Leicester. He was born in South Shields, where he first played football on a disused colliery waggon-way. Much of his academic career has been based in Leicester, which is also where he played his last game of football in the local Sunday League. When it became clear that he couldn't play again, he knew that something trivial and yet hugely important had changed for him. He is the author of the acclaimed George Orwell: English Rebel, published by Oxford University Press in 2013.
Summary
This Sporting Life offers an important view of England's cultural history through its sporting pursuits, carrying the reader to a match or a hunt or a fight, viscerally drawing a portrait of the sounds and smells, and showing that sport has been as important in defining British culture as gender, politics, education, class, and religion.
Additional text
Sparkling and scholarly, Robert Colls' new history of sport is expertly set within the wider context of English society and culture. Abounding with fresh insights, sport is celebrated and explained from Regency prize-fights to Wembley Cup Finals; vibrantly written, full of dramatic incidents and exceptional individuals.
