Sport and the British: A Modern History

by Richard Holt

Overview

Sport and the British has long been the standard work on the history of sport in Britain. This new edition provides a complete rewrite of the original text, incorporating new research, and providing an authoritative, accessible, and vivid account of sport as a distinctive and integral part of modern Britain and of 'the British world'.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199557202
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	12/04/2025
Series:	Oxford Studies in Social History
Edition description:	2nd ed.
Pages:	608
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 1.25(h) x 9.00(d)

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

IntroductionI. Old Ways of PlayingII. New Ways of PlayingIII. Amateurism and the VictoriansIV. The Spread of SportV. Democracy and SpectacleVI. Nations and IdentitiesVII. Imperial, International, and Olympic SportVIII. Affluence, Media, and the StateEpilogue and ConclusionAppendix

Editorial Reviews

"Worth owning just for its bibliography. The text shows that Holt has not only mastered his sources, he has turned them into something much more that the sum of their parts."—Albion

"Holt's lively and erudite book provides for both specialists and generalists an invaluable discussion of the heart of this empire...His timely synthesis of the most up-to-date research in the social history of sport is enhanced by his grasp of the varied and often-combative theoretical discussions about sport and society over the past decade; his appendix on the current state of this debate, in fact, serves as a very usseful primer for the uninitiated...Specialists in the field will find the book invaluable for its synthesis and as a foil for theoretical discussion, and anyone who studies the British in practically any way will come away from this volume with a fuller understanding of what has moved them through the past three centuries."—American Historical Review

"An important book that should attract a broad readership. This is the first time an outstanding scholar has looked at the large volume of material on sports history in Britain and synthesized it in a work that will give new insights to sports historians, new perspective to social historians, and a whole new way of looking at an important part of British culture to general readers or students...Highly recommended for college and university libraries."—CHOICE

"Sport is, for once, set meticulously in the context of real life, and the book is fascinating."—The Times (London)

"Sport and the British yields a splendidly written, cleverly crafted account of the development of sporting activity among the British and their imperial subjects from Elizabethan to modern times."—Victorian Studies

"Superb—one of the classic works in sport history."—Steven W. Pope, University of Tennessee

From the Publisher