Oxford Studies in Social History

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.