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Book Description: Traditional British sports were informal, spontaneous, regional, brutal and tainted by gambling, drunkenness and disorder. Victorian Britain made sport sporting respectable, rule bound and a nationwide obsession. Competitiveness became codified. A novel cult of amateurism battled against the emergence of commercialisation. Ancient sports, such as archery and fencing, were revived. New sports, such as tennis and cycling, were invented. Foreign sports, including polo, judo and lacrosse, were imported. Scotland gave curling to Canada and golf to the world. England exported cricket as far as New Zealand. New materials and technologies, from rubber to railways, transformed the way sports were played and organised. New settings were devised the enclosed racecourse, the cinder track, the swimming pool, the ice rink, the velodrome and the football ground. Brooklands was established as the world s first purpose built motor racing circuit and the White City as the first purpose built Olympic stadium. Sport became intrinsic to the weekend and the bank holiday, to the armed services and the popular press, to education and to empire. Sportsmanship came to represent the best of what it meant to be British. Richard Tames is the creator of the Shire Lifelines series, to which he has contributed titles on Robert Adam, William Morris, Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Josiah Wedgwood. He has also written The Public House for Shire.

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