History of Sports

Sports history in the British Library: selected titles Any analysis of sport, sporting events and sports governance must inevitably take into account the historical events which underpin them. For sports researchers, the British Library has an unrivalled collection of resources covering all aspects of the subject and in many different media, from books describing sporting events, to biographies and autobiographies of grass roots and elite athletes; coaching manuals; sport yearbooks and annual reports; directories of athletics clubs; sports periodicals; newspaper reports; and oral history interviews with sports people, including Olympians and Paralympians. These materials cover a long period of sporting activity both in Great Britain and elsewhere in the world. Some early materials As a glance at the earliest editions of the British Museum Library subject index show, the term ‘sport’ in the 18th century (and for much of the nineteenth) usually referred to blood sports. Nevertheless the existence of such headings as Rowing, Bowls, Cricket, Football, and Gymnastics in these early indexes point to a longstanding role for sport -as currently understood - in British social life. As was the case in ancient times, sports might originate as forms of preparation for war (from 1338, when the Hundred year’s war with France began, a series of English kings passed laws to make football illegal for fear that it would consume too much of the time set aside for archery practice); but they could also represent the natural human desire for friendly competition, so that alongside the jousting of the elite, games like bowling, stool ball and football could hold important places in the lives of ordinary people. One relatively early commentator on such traditional leisure activities was Joseph Strutt, whose ‘The sports and pastimes of the people of England (1830) is an invaluable resource. By the 17th century, in any case, the monarchy had reached an accommodation with the sporting