Business with pleasure - Steven Gunn shows how the spectacle of the joust oiled the wheels of service and diplomacy as well as building up the court's image, not just for Henry VIII but for his dynasty-founding father as well.
An English cricket team set out on a goodwill visit to Paris in the turbulent summer of 1789. But the proposed tour never took place. Overtaken by events, it turned back at Dover. John Goulstone and Michael Swanton compile the following account from broadsheets and from correspondence, between certain of the personalities involved.
John Williams, Eric Dunning and Patrick Murphy discuss the long history of British football hooliganism.
Juliet and Malcolm Vale trace through the web of secular status and religious instincts that made up the codes of conduct of English chivalry.
Duncan Shaw looks at how the entry of Spain into the EEC in 1985 furthered its process of integration into the European community. During the Franco years, the ostracised regime used football to initiate this gradual road towards acceptance. The Catalans and the Basques, however, used football as a means of popular protest.
Gladiatorial shows turned war into a game, preserved an atmosphere of violence in time of peace, and functioned as a political theatre which allowed confrontation between rulers and ruled.
John Lowerson shows how, at the turn of the century, the English middle class seized with enthusiasm on the sport of golf, for it was leisurely, sociable - and affordable.
Tony Mason considers the history of sport.
Until 1883, the Football Association Cup was won every year by former public schoolboys. As Christopher Andrew shows here, at the Cup Final that May, a working-class team from Lancashire snatched the honours from the Old Etonians.
In the inter-war years, football was a popular sport which drew huge crowds of spectators. The totalitarian regimes of Germany and Italy, argues Peter J. Beck, were not slow to realise the propaganda, potential of their nations' sporting successes – and soon Britain recognised the value of sport to its own national image.
