Manly & Muscular Diversions: Public Schools and the Nineteenth-century Sporting Revival

Modern sports and games are widely regarded as Britain's gift to the world. In the late 19th century British expatriate businessmen, railway builders and construction workers spread football through continental Europe and the Americas, and British Army garrisons introduced cricket and football wherever the map was pink. In this book, Tony Money shows how the roots of this export of team games lie both in the stable political and economic circumstances that prevailed in Britain in the 18th and early 19th centuries, and, more particularly, in the enthusiasms of boys at English public boarding schools.