More Than a Game: A History of How Sport Made Britain

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2025 PINSENT MASONS SPORTS WRITING AWARD A Times Best Sports Book of 2023 'Fascinating' Daily Telegraph 'Lively, rich and readable' The Spectator 'Thoughtful and entertaining' Guardian 'Completely eye-opening - every page contains a gem' Marina Hyde The remarkable stories of how sport shaped the British people. The history of Britain is inseparable from our love affair with sport. Many of our most dramatic social shifts have played out in sporting arenas: cricket and class mobility, rugby and regional rivalry, tennis and gender equality, golf and battles for land, boxing and race-relations. The sporting theatre has even accelerated radical change via heroes including independence fighters, suffragettes and Jewish bare-knuckle boxers crashing the established order. From jousting between kingdoms to the rise of the Commonwealth Games at the end of the imperial era, More Than a Game is the fascinating account of the games, players and audiences that have defined Britain's past.

About the Author :
David Horspool is an editor on the Times Literary Supplement, responsible for history, archaeology and sport. His most recent book is Cromwell: The Protector, for the Penguin Monarchs series. He is the author of Richard III: A Ruler and his Reputation, Alfred the Great, The English Rebel: One Thousand Years of Troublemaking from the Normans to the Nineties, and a co-author, with Arthony Arnove and Colin Firth, of The People Speak: Voices that Changed Britain. He contributes to the TLS, Guardian and The Spectator, and writes a monthly history column for the Oldie magazine. He is married with two sons and lives in London.

Review :
A superb historical overview of the eternally close and often symbiotic relationship between British sport and British society. Capacious, full of telling detail, unfailingly readable and, perhaps above all, imbued with rock-solid judgment, it deserves to become a classic of sporting literature Absolutely fascinating and completely eye-opening - every page contains a gem. I loved it A fascinating insight into how sport is both driven by and a driver of societal change A sparkling history that makes the reader keep murmuring "I never knew that" An elegant, richly-textured history Horspool places sport at the heart of Britain's story . . . A joy . . . More Than a Game observes the grand sweep of British sporting history playing out as a set of eye-opening facts Thoughtful and entertaining More Than A Game brilliantly and evocatively details the way we shaped this obsession and how it came to shape us and, indeed, our landscape Horspool writes briskly and clearly . . . if you like to watch sport while thinking politics, this is the book for you He has a lovely eye for memorable details . . . The most powerful theme of Horspool's book, though, is his attention to women's sport, so often marginalised in older accounts Highly original . . . lively, rich and readable . . . the range of Horspool's knowledge is impressive Fascinating . . . More Than a Game observes the grand sweep of British sporting history playing out as a set of eye-opening facts Illuminating . . . [Horspool] has a lovely eye for the informative detail Offers something rich, textured and complex: a thoughtful history of how sport has shaped society and vice versa. You will find delicious nuggets, several "I never knew that" fascinomas, and the overdue correction of long accepted narratives about our sport-obsessed nation