Winner of the Lord Aberdare Literary Prize 2015- from the British Society for activities History.

From its creation within the mid-late 19th century as a garden-party hobby to its improvement right into a hugely commercialised and professionalised high-performance recreation, the historical past of tennis in Britain displays vital issues in Britain’s social historical past. within the first finished and significant account of the heritage of tennis in Britain, Robert Lake explains how the game’s historic roots have formed its modern constitution, and the way the historical past of tennis can let us know a lot in regards to the background of wider British society.

Since its emergence as a spare-time diversion for landed elites, the dominant tradition in British tennis has been one in all amateurism and exclusion, with tennis sitting along cricket and golfing as a automobile for the replica of middle-class values all through wider British society within the 20th and twenty-first centuries. hence, the garden Tennis organization has been accused of a failure to advertise inclusion or widen participation, regardless of steadfast efforts to increase expertise and increase training practices and buildings. Robert Lake examines those subject matters within the context of the worldwide improvement of tennis and critical techniques of commercialisation and social improvement that experience formed either tennis and wider society.

The social background of tennis in Britain is a microcosm of late-nineteenth and twentieth-century British social background: sustained classification energy and sophistication clash; struggles for lady emancipation and racial integration; the decline of empire; and, Britain’s transferring courting with the USA, continental Europe, and Commonwealth countries. This booklet is necessary and engaging examining for anyone with an curiosity within the background of activity or British social history.