Sport and the British A Modern History

by Holt, Richard

• ISBN13: 9780199557202
• ISBN10: 0199557209
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2025-12-04
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

So many of the world's sports have their origins in Britain. Why is this? How did sports innovate and evolve in step with social upheaval, and political and cultural change? Why did British forms of play become so influential around the world?

Richard Holt explores all of these questions and more in this new edition of Sport and the British: A Modern History. For over thirty years Sport and the British has been the standard work on the history of sport in Britain, and the new edition provides a complete rewrite of the original text, incorporating the most up-to-date research.

Holt weaves a narrative of the excitement, passion, and variety of sports played the eighteenth century to the end of the twentieth, from street corner 'kickabouts' to the Commonwealth and Olympic Games. Sport and the British crosses class, race, culture, and gender, illuminating how the transformation of games speaks to the wider history of Britain and its global impact on the history of sport.

Author Biography

Richard Holt, Professor Emeritus, International Centre for Sports History and Culture, De Montfort University

Richard Holt read Modern History at St John's College, University of Oxford. He was a lecturer in Modern History at Stirling University from 1974 to 1990, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Leuven from 1991 to 1993, and Research Professor at the International Centre for Sports History and Culture at De Montfort University from 1995 to 2013. At De Montfort Holt co-directed an International Masters in the Humanities, Law, and Management of Sport from 1996, and was Centre Director from 2008 and 2013. He has supervised and examined doctoral students in Britain and France, and has been a consultant editor for the ODNB, the NPG, and the BBC.