Sport, for the English, has always been a defiant assertion of liberty

The English cannot be understood without some appreciation of their attachment to their games, and yet this is an area of their story often overlooked by historians. Or perhaps it is simply considered beneath their interest. This is the central message of Robert Colls’s superb account of England viewed through the medium of its sports and pastimes. Sport is ‘woven into almost everything else we do’ and it is about something much larger than merely chasing or hitting a ball, for it is bound up with

playing the game, enjoying the land, sensing the liberty, respecting contestation, valuing home, showing a bit of heart, recognising it in others, knowing that not everyone is political, or has to be, that not everyone knows what they think or (whichever comes first) how to say it, and understanding above all that sport is an enduring part of our liberty.

There is a lot in that, and much of it is unpacked in a book that romps from the hunting fields of Leicestershire to the development of modern football and the end of the maximum wage. On the way we encounter prize-fights, bull-baiting and plenty of anarchy.

What emerges from the scrum is a picture of a disputatious, stroppy people keenly aware of, and determined to protect, their ancient prerogatives. If doing so sets them against authority, then so much the very better. There may be humbug aplenty here, but it is humbug accompanied by the roast beef of old England and therefore, in the end, at least it is proper humbug.

For there have always been scolds — in 1911, Birmingham city council prosecuted 132 boys for playing football in the street — and Colls, who has a winning line of dry humour, is instinctively on the side of the sportsmen. Critically, this is more complex than taking the side of the working man against his social superiors.