Category: Sport

To while away chilly evenings, some sports developed miniature indoor versions adapted for play on tables, initially in the gentry’s mansions. ‘Whiff-Whaff’ […]

Cleopatra: “Let it alone. Let’s to billiards. Come, Charmian.” ~ from Shakespeare’s ‘Antony and Cleopatra’ (1606) This shows not only that the […]

Knights began to have personal coats-of-arms for identification on the battlefield in the 1100s and this quickly spread to the nobility and […]

Sir Andrew Barron Murray (1987-) is the UK’s most successful professional tennis player since Oxford-born Tim Henman (1974-) reached the world no.4 […]

An ancient British game called ‘town-ball’, ‘base’ or ‘base-ball’ were the forerunners of the sport of rounders. Indeed, ‘base-ball’ was both included […]

Sometimes called ‘The Dream Mile’, this feat is said to have begun with aristocrats betting on their respective footmen to race each […]

An open-water swimmer needs exceptional mental strength to attempt to swim the English Channel, the North Channel or even, as South African-born […]

Not only did the 10th Duke of Beaufort (1900-84) inaugurate the Badminton Horse Trials, but his grandfather the 8th Duke (1824-99) also […]

Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, DBE (1969-) is the UK’s most successful Paralympian. Born in Cardiff, she was immobilised with spina bifida by age […]

It was Queen Anne (1665-1714) who, in 1711, spotted Ascot Heath’s potential for horse racing and arranged for the first ‘Ascot races’ […]

Having a similar format to the Olympics, the Commonwealth Games began life in 1930 as the British Empire Games and went through […]