Leo McKinstry

How sport helped shape the British character

David Horspool connects different sports to our historical experience: cricket with class, golf with property rights, tennis with female emancipation and boxing with ethnicity

A 19th-century print of golfers on Blackheath. [Sarah Fabian-Baddiel/Heritage Images/Getty Images] 
issue 02 December 2023

Faith in state planning was central to Harold Wilson’s pledge to modernise Britain. It was his rhetorical vision of a country guided by strategic foresight and ‘forged in the white heat of technology’ that helped him win the 1964 election. But Wilson also displayed the same attachment to planning in his personal life.

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