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

Why did killing a fox mean liberty? What did parish revels have to do with the Peterloo Massacre? What did animal cruelty have to do with the English constitution? What did the Factory Acts mean for modern football?

In This Sporting Life, Robert Colls explains sport as one of England's great civil cultures. The lived experiences of people from all walks of life are reclaimed to tell England's history through its great sporting cultures, from the horseback pursuits of the wealthy and politically connected, to the street games in working-class neighbourhoods which needed nothing but a ball. It observes people at play, describes how they felt and thought, carries the reader along to a match or a hunt or a fight, draws out the sounds and smells of humans and animals, showing that sport has been as important in defining British culture as gender, politics, education, class, and religion.

Robert Colls, Professor of Cultural History, De Montfort University

Robert Colls is Professor of History at the International Centre for Sports History and Culture at De Montfort University, Leicester. He was born in South Shields, where he first played football on a disused colliery waggon-way. Much of his academic career has been based in Leicester, which is also where he played his last game of football in the local Sunday League. When it became clear that he couldn't play again, he knew that something trivial and yet hugely important had changed for him. He is the author of the acclaimed George Orwell: English Rebel, published by Oxford University Press in 2013.