Podcasts about lord aberdare literary prize

This week Geoff talks to two guests, Prof Matt Taylor and Dr Raf Nicholson, who have co-authored an article for the latest issue of the Society's journal, Sport in History, 'Women, sport and the people's war in Britain, 1939–45'. Geoff also catches up with Richard Boddie to talk about the Lord Aberdare Literary Prize which is awarded each year by the Society to recognise excellence in sport history. To access the journal article go to https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17460263.2020.1824939 Matthew Taylor is Professor of History in the International Centre for Sports History and Culture, where he is one of our foremost sports historians with numerous publications on the history of association football in particular. His latest book is Sport and the Home Front: Wartime Britain at Play, 1939-45, which was published by Routledge in 2020 and is available in all good bookshops. Dr Raf Nicholson of Bournemouth University is a longtime friend and presenter of the podcast and current chair of the BSSH, who specialises in women's sports history. Her most recent book is Ladies at Lord's: A History of Women's Cricket in Britain, which was published by Peter Lang in 2019 and short-listed for the Lord Aberdare Prize in 2020.

It's the keynote in the fourth instalment from the BSSH 2020 Conference as we hear previous podcast guest Dr Prashant Kidambi deliver a wide-ranging Sir Derek Birley Memorial lecture on the writing of sports history. Informed by CLR James's classic text Beyond the Boundary Prashant discusses the boundary in sports history – both as a literal dividing line and as a metaphor for ways of thinking about sport's relationship to wider events. He questions how the history of sport is premised on looking beyond the boundary to the world outside, which he argues leads practitioners into a neglect – wilful or absent-minded – of the events that happen on the field of play itself compared to popular writers. He also argues that the boundary needs to be considered as a temporal device as well as spatial. We need to think about how we divide up events in sport and the effect this has on the narratives and analysis that we construct around sport and its relationship to society. Stick around for a lively Q&A with BSSH members thinking through Prashant's ideas and sometimes questioning them. We also hear the Society's Chair, Raf Nicholson, announce the 2020 Lord Aberdare Literary Prize winner – the most prestigious award for academic sports history in the UK. But if you want to dive straight in to Prashant's lecture it begins at around the 7m 30s mark.

When ESPN anchor Stuart Scott passed away from cancer this past January, he was widely hailed for his innovative style, which mixed heavy does of African American slang and pop culture references. His signature phrases are now commonly used terms in the American lexicon: “As cool as the other side of the pillow” and, of course, “Boo-Yah!” After the announcer’s death, Barack Obama remarked that Scott “helped usher in a new way to talk about our favorite teams and the day’s best plays.” No disrespect to America’s Sports Fan-in-Chief, but already a century before Stuart Scott was dropping quotes from Shakespeare and Tupac Shakur in his game summaries, Pierce Egan was mixing the Bard and street slang into his sports writing. An Irish-born printshop worker, Egan moved from manning the presses to take up the pen, writing sketches about life in early-nineteenth-century London. In particular, Egan wrote about the world of boxing, an illegal activity that brought together upper- and lower-class enthusiasts. Egan wrote prolifically about the matches (surreptitiously staged at out-of-the-way rural spots), the fighters, the patrons and fans. As David Snowdon shows in his book Writing the Prizefight: Pierce Egan’s Boxiana World (Peter Lang, 2013), Egan’s accounts – published in multiple volumes titled Boxiana –painted a vivid picture of the early boxing community, known as “the Fancy.” Egan also established a distinctive style for writing about sport, one that mixed classical analogies, high literary references, and the vernacular of London’s lower classes. The blend inspired later English writers of the 19th century, and its echoes are still heard in the rapid-fire, pop culture-saturated style of today’s ESPN announcers. David’s book was awarded the 2014 Lord Aberdare Literary Prize by the British Society of Sports History. You can hear New Books in Sports interviews with previous Lord Aberdare Prize winners Tony Collins, Simon Martin, and Christopher Young and Kay Schiller. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When ESPN anchor Stuart Scott passed away from cancer this past January, he was widely hailed for his innovative style, which mixed heavy does of African American slang and pop culture references. His signature phrases are now commonly used terms in the American lexicon: “As cool as the other side of the pillow” and, of course, “Boo-Yah!” After the announcer’s death, Barack Obama remarked that Scott “helped usher in a new way to talk about our favorite teams and the day’s best plays.” No disrespect to America’s Sports Fan-in-Chief, but already a century before Stuart Scott was dropping quotes from Shakespeare and Tupac Shakur in his game summaries, Pierce Egan was mixing the Bard and street slang into his sports writing. An Irish-born printshop worker, Egan moved from manning the presses to take up the pen, writing sketches about life in early-nineteenth-century London. In particular, Egan wrote about the world of boxing, an illegal activity that brought together upper- and lower-class enthusiasts. Egan wrote prolifically about the matches (surreptitiously staged at out-of-the-way rural spots), the fighters, the patrons and fans. As David Snowdon shows in his book Writing the Prizefight: Pierce Egan’s Boxiana World (Peter Lang, 2013), Egan’s accounts – published in multiple volumes titled Boxiana –painted a vivid picture of the early boxing community, known as “the Fancy.” Egan also established a distinctive style for writing about sport, one that mixed classical analogies, high literary references, and the vernacular of London’s lower classes. The blend inspired later English writers of the 19th century, and its echoes are still heard in the rapid-fire, pop culture-saturated style of today’s ESPN announcers. David’s book was awarded the 2014 Lord Aberdare Literary Prize by the British Society of Sports History. You can hear New Books in Sports interviews with previous Lord Aberdare Prize winners Tony Collins, Simon Martin, and Christopher Young and Kay Schiller. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When ESPN anchor Stuart Scott passed away from cancer this past January, he was widely hailed for his innovative style, which mixed heavy does of African American slang and pop culture references. His signature phrases are now commonly used terms in the American lexicon: “As cool as the other side of the pillow” and, of course, “Boo-Yah!” After the announcer’s death, Barack Obama remarked that Scott “helped usher in a new way to talk about our favorite teams and the day’s best plays.” No disrespect to America’s Sports Fan-in-Chief, but already a century before Stuart Scott was dropping quotes from Shakespeare and Tupac Shakur in his game summaries, Pierce Egan was mixing the Bard and street slang into his sports writing. An Irish-born printshop worker, Egan moved from manning the presses to take up the pen, writing sketches about life in early-nineteenth-century London. In particular, Egan wrote about the world of boxing, an illegal activity that brought together upper- and lower-class enthusiasts. Egan wrote prolifically about the matches (surreptitiously staged at out-of-the-way rural spots), the fighters, the patrons and fans. As David Snowdon shows in his book Writing the Prizefight: Pierce Egan’s Boxiana World (Peter Lang, 2013), Egan’s accounts – published in multiple volumes titled Boxiana –painted a vivid picture of the early boxing community, known as “the Fancy.” Egan also established a distinctive style for writing about sport, one that mixed classical analogies, high literary references, and the vernacular of London’s lower classes. The blend inspired later English writers of the 19th century, and its echoes are still heard in the rapid-fire, pop culture-saturated style of today’s ESPN announcers. David’s book was awarded the 2014 Lord Aberdare Literary Prize by the British Society of Sports History. You can hear New Books in Sports interviews with previous Lord Aberdare Prize winners Tony Collins, Simon Martin, and Christopher Young and Kay Schiller. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When ESPN anchor Stuart Scott passed away from cancer this past January, he was widely hailed for his innovative style, which mixed heavy does of African American slang and pop culture references. His signature phrases are now commonly used terms in the American lexicon: “As cool as the other side of the pillow” and, of course, “Boo-Yah!” After the announcer’s death, Barack Obama remarked that Scott “helped usher in a new way to talk about our favorite teams and the day’s best plays.” No disrespect to America’s Sports Fan-in-Chief, but already a century before Stuart Scott was dropping quotes from Shakespeare and Tupac Shakur in his game summaries, Pierce Egan was mixing the Bard and street slang into his sports writing. An Irish-born printshop worker, Egan moved from manning the presses to take up the pen, writing sketches about life in early-nineteenth-century London. In particular, Egan wrote about the world of boxing, an illegal activity that brought together upper- and lower-class enthusiasts. Egan wrote prolifically about the matches (surreptitiously staged at out-of-the-way rural spots), the fighters, the patrons and fans. As David Snowdon shows in his book Writing the Prizefight: Pierce Egan’s Boxiana World (Peter Lang, 2013), Egan’s accounts – published in multiple volumes titled Boxiana –painted a vivid picture of the early boxing community, known as “the Fancy.” Egan also established a distinctive style for writing about sport, one that mixed classical analogies, high literary references, and the vernacular of London’s lower classes. The blend inspired later English writers of the 19th century, and its echoes are still heard in the rapid-fire, pop culture-saturated style of today’s ESPN announcers. David’s book was awarded the 2014 Lord Aberdare Literary Prize by the British Society of Sports History. You can hear New Books in Sports interviews with previous Lord Aberdare Prize winners Tony Collins, Simon Martin, and Christopher Young and Kay Schiller. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Azzurri, cyclists, boxers, Berlusconi, Balotelli, strapping Fascist men preparing to bear arms, strapping Fascist women preparing to bear children, the shirtless Duce, Ferraris, Vespas, doping scandals, World Cup celebrations, Serie A officials on the take, Il Grande Torino, and the barefoot marathoner Abebe Bikila. You find all this and more in Simon Martin‘s history of Italian sports, Sport Italia: The Italian Love Affair with Sport (I.B.Tauris, 2011). Simon’s book is sports history at its best–that is, it’s history at its fullest. As you hear in the interview, Italian sport offers a window to understanding the country’s uneven economic development, its fractious politics, the ideology and aesthetics of Fascism, the unrelenting weight of corruption, the role of the Catholic Church, and the persistent divide between North and South. Above all, there is the unresolved question of what it means to be Italian. Metternich’s adage that “Italy is only a geographical expression”still holds a kernel of truth, some 150 years after the Risorgimento.One of Simon’s principal arguments is that sport is the one thing which most consistently binds the country together. Simon’s book was awarded the 2012 Lord Aberdare Literary Prize, presented each year by the British Society for Sports History. This was the second time he’s received the award, having won in 2004 for his history of Italian football under Fascism. You can also find interviews with other winners of the Aberdare Prize in the New Books in Sports archive: the 2011 winners, Chris Young and Kai Schiller, talking about their book on the 1972 Munich Olympics; and Tony Collins on his history of English rugby union, which won the award for 2010.         Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Azzurri, cyclists, boxers, Berlusconi, Balotelli, strapping Fascist men preparing to bear arms, strapping Fascist women preparing to bear children, the shirtless Duce, Ferraris, Vespas, doping scandals, World Cup celebrations, Serie A officials on the take, Il Grande Torino, and the barefoot marathoner Abebe Bikila. You find all this and more in Simon Martin‘s history of Italian sports, Sport Italia: The Italian Love Affair with Sport (I.B.Tauris, 2011). Simon’s book is sports history at its best–that is, it’s history at its fullest. As you hear in the interview, Italian sport offers a window to understanding the country’s uneven economic development, its fractious politics, the ideology and aesthetics of Fascism, the unrelenting weight of corruption, the role of the Catholic Church, and the persistent divide between North and South. Above all, there is the unresolved question of what it means to be Italian. Metternich’s adage that “Italy is only a geographical expression”still holds a kernel of truth, some 150 years after the Risorgimento.One of Simon’s principal arguments is that sport is the one thing which most consistently binds the country together. Simon’s book was awarded the 2012 Lord Aberdare Literary Prize, presented each year by the British Society for Sports History. This was the second time he’s received the award, having won in 2004 for his history of Italian football under Fascism. You can also find interviews with other winners of the Aberdare Prize in the New Books in Sports archive: the 2011 winners, Chris Young and Kai Schiller, talking about their book on the 1972 Munich Olympics; and Tony Collins on his history of English rugby union, which won the award for 2010.         Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Most modern sports have some creation myth that usually links them to an almost-sacred place of origin. Baseball has its Cooperstown. Golf its St. Andrews. Basketball its Springfield College. If you are a football fan, whether of the All Blacks or the Springboks, the Magpies or the Swans, the Longhorns or the Stampeders, your ancestral shrine is a centuries-old boarding school in the West Midlands of England. It was at this place in 1823, according to legend, that schoolboy William Webb Ellis first caught a football and ran with it. The game that developed after this violation of the rules took the name of young Webb Ellis’ school: Rugby. The branches of rugby football spread widely in the 19th century and took on distinctive shapes, so that every sport today in which players run with and toss an oval ball, as opposed to dribbling and kicking a round one, can trace its history back to Webb Ellis’ forward rush. The legend of William Webb Ellis is just one subject that Tony Collins addresses in A Social History of English Rugby Union (Routledge, 2009). The book is a masterly work of scholarship that earned the Lord Aberdare Literary Prize for Sports History in 2010. Tony unfolds the history of rugby union from its origins at Rugby and other elite schools of the 19th century, through its expansion into Britain’s industrial cities and overseas empire, and down to its current status as a worldwide sport that draws big crowds, bigger television audiences, and even bigger revenues. But the larger and more important story is what the sport’s history reveals about England in the 19th and 20th centuries. Even if you are not a fan of rugby, you will learn a lot from this book about England and its empire, the nation at war, and the social and cultural changes of the postwar decades. As Tony explains in the interview, a study of rugby is particularly useful for viewing larger historical issues. The two codes of rugby–“rugby union” and “rugby league”–are distinguished not only by different rules and styles of play but also by different social, cultural, and political outlooks. If you don’t know the first thing about union and league, don’t worry: Tony gives us a lesson. But whether you know of rugby only from Matt Damon in Invictus or you’re a veteran player, you’ll appreciate Tony’s insights into the game, the history of modern England, and the reasons that the history of sports matters. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Most modern sports have some creation myth that usually links them to an almost-sacred place of origin. Baseball has its Cooperstown. Golf its St. Andrews. Basketball its Springfield College. If you are a football fan, whether of the All Blacks or the Springboks, the Magpies or the Swans, the Longhorns or the Stampeders, your ancestral shrine is a centuries-old boarding school in the West Midlands of England. It was at this place in 1823, according to legend, that schoolboy William Webb Ellis first caught a football and ran with it. The game that developed after this violation of the rules took the name of young Webb Ellis’ school: Rugby. The branches of rugby football spread widely in the 19th century and took on distinctive shapes, so that every sport today in which players run with and toss an oval ball, as opposed to dribbling and kicking a round one, can trace its history back to Webb Ellis’ forward rush. The legend of William Webb Ellis is just one subject that Tony Collins addresses in A Social History of English Rugby Union (Routledge, 2009). The book is a masterly work of scholarship that earned the Lord Aberdare Literary Prize for Sports History in 2010. Tony unfolds the history of rugby union from its origins at Rugby and other elite schools of the 19th century, through its expansion into Britain’s industrial cities and overseas empire, and down to its current status as a worldwide sport that draws big crowds, bigger television audiences, and even bigger revenues. But the larger and more important story is what the sport’s history reveals about England in the 19th and 20th centuries. Even if you are not a fan of rugby, you will learn a lot from this book about England and its empire, the nation at war, and the social and cultural changes of the postwar decades. As Tony explains in the interview, a study of rugby is particularly useful for viewing larger historical issues. The two codes of rugby–“rugby union” and “rugby league”–are distinguished not only by different rules and styles of play but also by different social, cultural, and political outlooks. If you don’t know the first thing about union and league, don’t worry: Tony gives us a lesson. But whether you know of rugby only from Matt Damon in Invictus or you’re a veteran player, you’ll appreciate Tony’s insights into the game, the history of modern England, and the reasons that the history of sports matters. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Most modern sports have some creation myth that usually links them to an almost-sacred place of origin. Baseball has its Cooperstown. Golf its St. Andrews. Basketball its Springfield College. If you are a football fan, whether of the All Blacks or the Springboks, the Magpies or the Swans, the Longhorns or the Stampeders, your ancestral shrine is a centuries-old boarding school in the West Midlands of England. It was at this place in 1823, according to legend, that schoolboy William Webb Ellis first caught a football and ran with it. The game that developed after this violation of the rules took the name of young Webb Ellis’ school: Rugby. The branches of rugby football spread widely in the 19th century and took on distinctive shapes, so that every sport today in which players run with and toss an oval ball, as opposed to dribbling and kicking a round one, can trace its history back to Webb Ellis’ forward rush. The legend of William Webb Ellis is just one subject that Tony Collins addresses in A Social History of English Rugby Union (Routledge, 2009). The book is a masterly work of scholarship that earned the Lord Aberdare Literary Prize for Sports History in 2010. Tony unfolds the history of rugby union from its origins at Rugby and other elite schools of the 19th century, through its expansion into Britain’s industrial cities and overseas empire, and down to its current status as a worldwide sport that draws big crowds, bigger television audiences, and even bigger revenues. But the larger and more important story is what the sport’s history reveals about England in the 19th and 20th centuries. Even if you are not a fan of rugby, you will learn a lot from this book about England and its empire, the nation at war, and the social and cultural changes of the postwar decades. As Tony explains in the interview, a study of rugby is particularly useful for viewing larger historical issues. The two codes of rugby–“rugby union” and “rugby league”–are distinguished not only by different rules and styles of play but also by different social, cultural, and political outlooks. If you don’t know the first thing about union and league, don’t worry: Tony gives us a lesson. But whether you know of rugby only from Matt Damon in Invictus or you’re a veteran player, you’ll appreciate Tony’s insights into the game, the history of modern England, and the reasons that the history of sports matters. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices