This Sporting Life: Sport and Liberty in England, 1760-1960

Having read Robert Colls fascinating biography "George Orwell : English Rebel" (2013) I had high expectations for his latest book "This Sporting Life: Sport and Liberty in England, 1760-1960" and this book does not disappoint.Colls' book treats the modern history of sport and liberty in England in a style at once analytical and accessible. Each page is full of informative and amusing anecdotes and has a wealth of colourful characters….and err…. footnotes!The range of subjects is impressive. Starting with foxhunting it explains game and land law reform. There the history of prize fighting and the introduction of the Queensbury rules. We also have rush bearing as the background to the Peterloo massacre at the Chartist rally in Manchester.English sport and ancient, quaint, quirky and cruel customs are covered in a scholarly and entertaining fashion; what one man regards as a rightful liberty another sees as an atrocity.The rise of local authority control of society is charted at the expense of the local parish and parochial customs.The English civil war is interpreted as not only religious but also influenced by puritan attitudes to sport and other entertainments. Colls explains how the English cavalry was recruited from gentlemen huntsmen. Army commissions were purchased by the gentry with no regard to competency resulting in many military disasters, for example the charge of the light brigade (tallyho!). Conditions in the Crimean war and the struggle for army reforms are explained and ultimately the many opportunities for participating in sport as part of army life.The development of sports in public schools is given extensive coverage as is women’s suffrage and women’s participation in sport in line with Victorian expectations of women’s role in society.Finally there is an authoritative and definitive chapter on football; association, union and league with a nod to Gaelic and American grid iron.Throughout Colls shows how social norms of the day influence the opportunity for and the development of modern sport.The 92 page bibliography is a final knockout blow! This book hits the back of the net with the result: working man - five : aristocrats - nil!"This Sporting Life" benefits from a lifetime of research into modern English history and identity and I recommend it to all who love sport and England.

Very good book indeed and more of a social history than a sporting one and worthy of the praise it has received.One small quibble though is that it often mentions people and events without any explanation of who they are or why they happened but still a very entertaining brilliantly researched read for all that.

This is a serious piece of writing about the part that ancient customs, and social activities of a sporting nature, have played in all walks of life from the mid eighteenth century. Almost encyclopaedic in his scope and depth, Professor Colls tells of local festivals or wakes, rush carrying, and even bull baiting in Stamford, before the bullards were stopped from a day of sport chasing a bull through the streets of the town. (Shooting game birds was the right of the gentry; taking them at night on Stanhope moor by leadminers seeking to put food on their table was poaching.) These were liberties that belonged to the people but were gradually replaced by organised sports such as football and cricket, both played by the upper and working classes. Each custom or sport is described in detail with many examples from primary sources – the scholarship is impeccable. Robert Colls is equally at home writing of the public-school bloods, as of the craft apprentices who would work all day and then play as amateurs for their local football teams. Where else would you read in one volume, of the moment when Thring, Headmaster of Uppingham School, found his first cricket eleven celebrating a famous victory by drinking claret! - which he described as ‘one of the most utter acts of treason’; and then a few chapters further on, of Bevin boys, like ‘Nat’ Lofthouse, Len Shackleton and Jackie Milburn, working a full shift down the pit, starting at 5.30 a.m on a Saturday morning, and then dashing to the ground and having a shower before the game to wash off the coal dust. A marvellous read that will appeal as much to the academic social historian as to the armchair sporting enthusiast.

A very difficult read-repetitive and boring

I find this almost impossible to read. Just lots of words from endless primary sources. How can a book about sport be so dull.