This Sporting Life

A rugby player finds fame and fortune in a bleak mining town, but he cannot outrun the emptiness he feels inside in Man Booker Prize–winning author David Storey’s seminal first novel On Christmas Eve, Arthur breaks his two front teeth. A teammate on the rugby pitch is too slow with a handoff, and instead of catching the ball, Art catches an opponent’s foot right in the mouth. When he regains consciousness, the match is almost over, but he keeps playing regardless. Where else would he go? His entire life, Art has only cared about sports and nothing grabs his attention quite like the lightning-fast violence of Rugby League. He knows it could kill him, but it also makes him feel alive. In this hard-bitten Yorkshire mining town, the warriors of the rugby pitch are treated like gods. Through the aggressive sport, Art finds money, friends, and countless women. But when his lust for violence begins to fade, will he have the courage to leave the game behind?

This Sporting Life offers an important view of England's cultural history through its sporting pursuits, carrying the reader to a match or a hunt or a fight, viscerally drawing a portrait of the sounds and smells, and showing that sport has been as important in defining British culture as gender, politics, education, class, and religion.

An introduction to the Bible's teaching on sport and a compendium of practical advice for maximising the blessings of sport while avoiding its potential dangers.

Witty and perceptive essays by a sports-obsessed, world-renowned novelist.

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.

This lively and intriguing study looks at the way sports both reflected and shaped Victorian society. Just as our own games have a lot to say about modern American culture, so sports are a prism through which we can gain valuable insights into Victorian society. The Sporting Life: Victorian Sports and Games is an engaging and perceptive account of how sport developed during Britain's heyday, who played (and who wasn't allowed to play), and what it all conveys about gender, race, imperialism, and national pride. Drawing extensively on 19th-century writings, The Sporting Life begins with a survey of sports in pre-Victorian England and the impact of industrialism in the early 19th century. We read of the effects of evangelicalism and utilitarianism, both of which first opposed sport, then used it for their own purposes. We learn of the association of sports with masculinity, an identification women challenged late in the century. Finally we learn how English sports became part of the imperial game, used to promote—and resist—the spread of Victoria's vast empire.

This book offers an opportunity to reconsider the films of the British New Wave in the light of forty years of heated debate. By eschewing the usual tendency to view films like A Kind of Loving and The Entertainer collectively and include them in broader debates about class, gender, and ideology, this book presents a new and innovative look at this famous cycle of British films. For each film, a re-distribution of existing critical emphasis also allows the problematic relationship between these films and the question of realism to be reconsidered. Drawing upon existing sources and returning to long-standing and unchallenged assumptions about these films, this book offers the opportunity for the reader to return to the British New Wave and decide for themselves where they stand in relation to the films.