Sport in History

In the earliest depictions of the schoolgirl in British girls’ fiction, she is far from the hockey stick wielding tomboys recognisable in the stories of Angela Brazil and Elinor Brent-Dyer, instead restricted to crocodile walks and movement-limiting dress codes. Over the first decades of the twentieth-century, popular depictions of the schoolgirl radically changed her into a games fanatic, distinct from both her Victorian literary ancestors and the real modern schoolgirl she ostensibly represented.The advent of the sporting schoolgirl in girls’ media offered revised codes of what was considered acceptable behaviour for girls, re-envisioning Victorian femininity to incorporate a patriotic, masculinised vision of modern girlhood which presented sport as a gateway to the previously inaccessible heroism and honour available to boys. Through sport, the increasingly stigmatised stereotypes of ill-health and melodrama attached to Victorian womanhood were rejected in favour of an emotionally restrained and physically active masculine girlhood. This seminar looks to a range of early twentieth-century authors such as Brazil and Dorothea Moore to investigate how representations of sport offered a tool by which femininity was redefined for a new century of athletic women and girls.Atlanta Tsiaoukkas is a PhD student at the Centre for Research in Children’s Literature at the University of Cambridge. Her research explores Victorian and Edwardian girls’ school fiction, and she is widely interested in the development of girls’ cultural identities and their popular representation in British and Irish media.

If you were watching or were at the England Vs Wales football match last month, you may have seen a cap ceremony that saw Frank Soo, the first Asian player ever to play for the national team (albeit in semi-official matches only) and the only man of East Asian descent to date, receive a posthumous cap for his nine appearances for the England team during World War 2. But who was Frank Soo? And much like his contemporary pioneer Jack Leslie, why was he forgotten by football for many years? We're honoured to be joined on the podcast by Alan Lau, co-founder and chairman of the Frank Soo foundation, who has spent 8 years tirelessly trying to promote the legacy of Frank Soo as well as be a champion of community football, but primarily the Chinese and East Asian Community, both in the UK and overseas. Alan's championing has been recognised in football, when Alan won the Watford FC Community Sports & Education Trust Equality Champion award in 2023. But Alan is an inclusivity champion in the wider world of football, holding roles as an FA EDI Community of Practice Ambassador, as well as serving as chair of the Hertfordshire FA's IAG (Inclusion Advisory Group) & the FA County IAG Chair's steering group. He additionally serves on the national council of the Football Supporters Association. But Alan is here today to talk about the work he's done with the Frank Soo foundation and educate us a bit about Frank Soo and the importance of Asian inclusivity into football.

So many of the world’s sports have their origins in Britain. Why is this? How did sports innovate and evolve in step with social upheaval, and political and cultural change? Why did British forms of play become so influential around the world?Richard Holt explores all these questions and more in a new edition of Sport and the British: A Modern History. For over thirty years Sport and the British has been the standard work on the history of sport in Britain, and the new edition provides a complete rewrite of the original text, incorporating the most up-to-date research.The original text, published in 1989, has been described as the "Bible of British sports history". In this new edition, Professor Holt provides a complete rewrite of the original text, incorporating the most up-to-date research in the field and we were lucky to have such an esteemed panel in Raf Nicholson, Rob Colls, Dil Porter and Tony Collins join Richard Holt in discussing the book at length at the Institute of Historical Research in London in what was a record crowd of 70+ for the Sport and Leisure History Seminar series and chaired by BSSH Vice-chair Amanda Callan-Spenn.

The podcast is excited to share with you this roundtable from the 2025 British Society of Sports History Conference at Ulster University which celebrated 30 years of Sports History being studied at De Montfort University (DMU) in Leicester, UK. The panel was chaired by current DMU associate professor Heather Dichter, alongside DMU emeritus professor Richard Holt and former students of Sports History at the university including Dr Melinda Reid and Dr Tom Fabian (who joined virtually) to discuss the history of the Sports History and culture MA which began in 1995 and the launch of the International Centre for Sports History and Culture (ICSHC) a year later, in addition to all of the great research that has emerged over the past three decades. We hope you enjoy this roundtable and if you would like to find out more about Sports History at DMU, you can do so here: https://www.dmu.ac.uk/research/research-faculties-and-institutes/art-design-humanities/icshc/international-centre-for-sports-history-and-culture.aspx

This episode features Matthew Brown, winner of the 2024 Lord Aberdare Book Prize, giving his Lord Aberdare Prize Keynote lecture, at the 2025 BSSH Conference at Ulster University in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Professor Matthew Brown is professor of Latin American history at the University of Bristol.Professor Brown delivered a wonderful and engaging keynote that covered a wide-ranging overview of Sports within South America in the early 20th Century and interwar period, covering a variety of sports including soccer, swimming and Athletics and the pride or representation it gave to certain countries within South America in what was a wonderful start to the conference. There is also a brief introduction given by BSSH past chair and BSSH 2025 Conference Organiser, Dr Conor Heffernan, on the importance of sports within Northern Ireland and the importance of curiosity when addressing historical work.

Women falling off bicycles or crashing into men, society women assembled neatly next to a bicycle (but rarely sat upon), women cycling along telegraph wires, socialising in gentile city-centre parks or cycling through space and time as celestial figures; visuals of cycling women are ambiguous and complex. In many ways, these visuals reflect enduring confusion with how to depict and respond to feminine speed, physical power and relationship to technology. During the 1890’s ‘cycling craze’ women’s cycling was viewed by many as damaging women’s health and femininity but by 1939 cycling was one way in which women could attain the ideal, modern female body – so what changed? The history and visual culture of women’s cycling during these critical decades (1880-1939) offers a useful lens through which we can assess and understand changing forms of feminine modernity.Tamsin Johnson has a blended academic and professional experience working and researching within fashion and visual cultures. Tamsin holds a master’s degree in Culture, Style and Fashion from Nottingham Trent University where she returned in 2023 for doctoral study. Her AHRC-funded PhD Cycling Women and Visions of Modernity and Femininity in British Visual Culture (1880-1939) aims to recover lost visions of women’s cycling and utilises a range of national archives – both cycling and non-cycling specific. Recent research outputs include an article with The Conversation and features on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour and ABC Australia’s Late Night Live. You can contact Tamsin or find her on Social Media via the links below:tamsin.johnson@ntu.ac.ukInstagram: thewheeltamsinOrchID: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-1430-3844

Join Max Portman as he speaks to Ben Robinson, an investigate journalist and series producer for the BBC about Ben's book "The Trillion Dollar Conman: The Astonishing True Story of the Most Audacious Fraud in Sport", released in October 2024 by Icon Books. Ben's book covers the high and lows of the 2009/10 football season, where Notts County, the world's oldest professional football club (founded in 1862), and struggling to survive in English Football's League Two (the 4th highest tier of English football), were subject to a mysterious takeover. This takeover, supposedly backed by the Bahrain royal family, promised millions of pounds worth of investment and marquee players, including Sol Campbell and Kasper Schmeichel, were signed by former England manager Sven-Göran Eriksson, who had been appointed as a director of football to take the club all the way to the Premier League.However, within months, the dream turned into a nightmare as it transpired that the club, the players and the fans had been mis-sold a dream by a convicted fraudster called Russell King, who's elaborate scheme involved F1 teams, the North Korean regime and a false bank guarantee; All of which Ben and Max discuss throughout this episode, amongst many other weird and wonderful happenings in Nottingham that season! If you want to learn more about this subject, Ben's book has already turned into a podcast series with the same title as his book, hosted by Comedian and podcaster Alice Levine, which can be found on BBC Sounds. If you love football or just love a good story full of twists, turns and drama that would make a soap opera jealous, this is the perfect podcast episode for you! For more information about the podcast, please visit: https://www.sportinhistory.org/ or https://shows.acast.com/sport-in-history-podcast

Today, leisure is often seen as a universal right – accessible to all, regardless of background. Yet historically, access to leisure and sport was highly regulated and deeply unequal. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, who had leisure time, what kind of sport they could pursue, and where and how they could do so, was determined by intersecting factors of gender, race, and especially class. This talk examines the cultural and social functions of leisure through the lens of equestrian sport. Focusing on the Victorian era, it argues that horseback riding was far more than a recreational pastime; it was a highly coded system of social communication. Practices such as dress, posture, and riding instructions served to reinforce existing social hierarchies and embodied norms. Drawing on examples from equestrian culture, the talk explores how race, class, and gender shaped not only access to leisure but also its meaning. By shedding light on these historical dynamics, the lecture invites reflection on contemporary debates around accessibility and inclusion in sport and leisure today – reminding us that leisure has never been neutral, and still carries the weight of social structures.Noemi Steuerwald is a historian based at the University of Bern, Switzerland. Her doctoral research explores the cultural and gender history of equestrian sport, with a focus on the 19th and 20th centuries. She is particularly interested in how practices of horseback riding reflect and shape historical dynamics of body, race, class, and gender.