British enthusiasm for sport is legendary. This book looks at some of the myths and realities surrounding that legend and aims to chronicle how sporting traditions were shaped and how they in turn contributed to the shaping of British social conventions and attitudes. Tracing sporting history from its earliest origins, Derek Birley emphasizes how sport served vastly different functions from the modern notion of a leisure time relief from work. The book begins by examining hunting and the ritualized physical encounters once practised for the purposes of survivial and preparation for warfare. The author then describes how social conventions gradually came to govern the development of sport with an aristocratic, privileged circle forming exclusive regulations. It was from this circle of concepts of "fayre lawe" and, eventually, sportsmanship emanated and the laws of the major sports evolved. However, discriminatory game laws could not prevent the eventual widening of sporting activity, although sport always remained stratified.
The author examines this elaborate stratification in his coverage of such phenomena as the exclusiveness of field sports, the public school influence on football and rowing, the urban middle-class vogues for croquet, badminton and lawn tennis and the reverence for cricket. These social issues are cross threads in the theme of sport's influence on national identity, patriotism and empire-building in the creation of an imperfectly united but highly distinctive kingdom. This book is intended for general readers and students of social and sports history.