THE ENGLISH AT PLAY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 547, 16 December 1949, Page 14

THE ENGLISH AT PLAY

ENGLISH SPORTS AND PASTIMES, py Christina Hole; B, T. Batsford Lid., London, through the British Council, E have no excuse now for not recognising the importance of the social history of a country, as distinct from the political, in the making of a true picture of its past. Historians who cover the general story do not overlook this aspect, and specialists serve us well. One of these specialists, Christina Hole, gives in her latest book an account of English sports and pastimes from an early period. Into a hundred and eighty pages she has packed information about not only hunting and shooting, archery and sword-play, football, cricket, tennis and athletics, but also fairs and wakes,. morality plays and popular shows, theatres, spas, indoor amusements and even sea-bathing. With Miss Hole the reader plays the old crowd-aside football, watches bull-running and bear-

baiting, listens to music in the home, walks with Beau Nash in Bath, and goes to Astley’s circus, The book is well documented and generously and beautifully illustrated. Only a few of the conclusions that emerge can be mentioned here. The English have always been an athletic people, fond of outdoor pursuits. The number "of these re- _ creations will surprise many readers. It seems plain that cen-

| turies ago there were more of them than oe are today, and that a larger pro- | Portion of the people-took part. The was small, so that there was far more room for manoeuvring. The Church was the chief patron of amusements. "Of all the changes in thought and outlook that are mirrored by our aa-' tional pastimes, perhaps the most striking are the general decline of cruelty and the parting of religion and recreation." It was common for people to amuse themselves on Sunday, but we must bear in mihd that much of what they did had a religious basis. "The traditional English Sunday only came into full flower in Victorian times."

Far back we find laments over preoccupation with sport such as our own time has known, Nine years before the defeat of the Armada an English writer "raised the old familiar cry that England was decadent," which can be traced from the 6th Century to the present day. "England isn’t what it was." "No, it never was." Miss Hole draws attention to the; steadying, unifying effect. of the mingling of the classes in sport, a factor which Trevelyan has enshrined in a sentence: "If the French ‘noblesse’ had been capable of playing cricket with their peasants, their chateaux would not have been burnt."

A.

M.