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Hello and welcome to the History Extra podcast from BBC History magazine, Britain's best-selling

History magazine. I'm Ellie Corpon. In today's episode, you'll be hearing from Robert Coles.

Robert's latest book, Disporting Life, Sport and Liberty in England, 1760 to 1960.

Charts a national obsession with sporting pursuits. From early 19th century prizevites

to the transformational effect that industrialisation had on the popularity of football,

he spoke to our prediction editor, Spencer Misen. Okay, Robert, your new book, which is called

This Sporting Life, explores the role that sport has played within civil society over the

past two centuries. Now, I was quite interested in the subtitle, which is Sport and Liberty in

England, 1760 to 1960. Now, what if you could just begin by telling me what in particular connects

Liberty to sport? Yeah, well, you were surprised with that subtitle, so was I.

I thought I was just exploring the, you might call the anthropology or the social history

of how sport appears in every part of our civil society. I thought that's what I was doing, and

for half the book I was doing that. And then it just hit me as these things do, that there is

something particularly freeing and incisive and personal about sport in the same way there is

...