Many historians have claimed that respectability was the sharpest line of social division in Victorian society, even that the line between the 'respectable' and 'unrespectable' was more significant than between rich and poor. This irreverent and revisionist collection argues that they have over-polarised Victorian attitudes and challenges the conventional view that middle-class Victorian leisure had a respectable and serious purpose and approach.
Disreputable Pleasures explores the more sinful and unrespectable Victorian male sporting pleasures, demonstrating the complex...

Drawing inspiration from C.L.R. James' well-known epigram, "What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?" the book suggests that South Asian sports make sense only when placed within the broader colonial and post colonial context. It demonstrates that sports not only influence politics and vice versa, but that the two are inseparable. Sports are not only political; they are politics, intrigue, culture, and art. To deny this is to denigrate the position of sports in modern South Asian society.
This volume was previously published as a special issue of the journal "Sport in the...

With the aim of deepening understanding of the place of women in the cultural heritage of modern society, this collection of essays brings together the hitherto discrete perspectives of women's studies and the social history of sport.

This book examines aspects of sport which Britain nurtured within its own culture and also transmitted to overseas territories with the expansion of empire.

With the aim of deepening understanding of the place of women in the cultural heritage of modern society, this collection of essays brings together the hitherto discrete perspectives of women's studies and the social history of sport, drawing on research from Britain, North America and Australia.

The contributors to this collection of essays explore the symbolic meanings that have been attached to sport in Europe by considering some of the mythic heroes who have dominated the sporting landscapes of their own countries, including W.G. Grace, Jean Borotra, Max Schmeling, Raymond Kopa and Gina Bartoli. The ambition is to understand what these icons stood for in the eyes of those who watched or read about them.

Sport is far more than a national and international entertainment. It is a source of political identity, morale, pride and superiority. This text explores the influence of sport on the nations of Europe as a mechanism of national solidarity promoting a sense of identity, unity, status and esteem as a instrument of confrontation between nations, stimulating agression, stereotyping and images of superiority and as a cultural bond between nations across national boundaries, providing a common enthusiasm, shared goodwill the transcendence of national alliegences and opportunities for association,...

In the Nordic countries (Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland), as elsewhere, sport has been an assertion of individual and group identity, a demonstration of modernity, a source of personal, local and regional self-esteem, a symbol of confrontation and a preparation for war.

The contributors to this collection of essays explore the symbolic meanings that have been attached to sport in Europe by considering some of the mythic heroes who have dominated the sporting landscapes of their own countries, including W.G. Grace, Jean Borotra, Max Schmeling, Raymond Kopa and Gina Bartoli. The ambition is to understand what these icons stood for in the eyes of those who watched or read about them.

In this book Douglas Booth looks at the role of sport in the fostering of a new national identity in South Africa.