Sports History Conference 11/12 September

As it published my articles on organised cycling and politics in Battersea and on the Edwardian Rolling Skating boom I am delighted to be able to promote the Annual Conference of the British Society for Sports History on 11-12 September. I have been arguing for some time that one of the few advantages of the Olympics in London 2012 is the stimulus it should give to researching and commemorating the wide range of professional and non-professional sports and physical leisure in local areas. The Conference is taking place at the Wellcome Collection in Euston Rd on Friday 11 and Saturday 12 September. It has a full programme of parallel sessions under the headings: medical aspects of Sport, the impact of WWI on sport, Olympics and national projection, sports and politics, sport in totalitarian states, local case studies in the development of sport, coaching, sport and the media, women and sport, sport and business and pre-modern sport, sport and ethnicity, national sorting cultures, British influence on European sport, sport and the arts, clubs and their communities, competition and conflict, representations of sport, sporting tours, issues of sporting style. Of particular interest will be Daryl Leeworthy Partisan Players: Youth, Sport, and Political Organisation in Britain, 1918 – 1939, Luke Harris Going in British Fashion’. British Perceptions of Britishness and the 1908 London Olympic Games; Keiko Ikeda Pierce Egan’s ‘Tom-and-Jerryism’ and its Music: A Musical Sports History, Samantha-Jayne Oldfield The Coaching Business: Nineteenth Century Manchester Sporting Entrepreneurs, and Geoff Levett Sport and the Empire: Colonial Tours in Edwardian London. It will be interesting to look across between sports history and the legacies of British slavery. How many slave owners were active in a range of sports in adult life (bare-knuckle boxing, horse racing, fencing, cricket, etc) either in Britain or the West Indies, whether did any of them helped fund sports organisations in Britain, especially after their received their emancipation compensation? Then there is a the African-American Robert J. Harlan who is reputed to have been wealthy enough to have been involved horse racing and gambling when in Britain between 1858 and 1868. Closing date for registration is 22 August. Full details, conference registration form, etc on: www.sporthistory.org.