A history of the effloresence of British sport in its late Victorian and Edwardian golden age. Focusing on the human dimension of sporting history, the author explores the personalities and events of this pivotal era when Britain was leading the world into its greatest modern obsession. Sporting values, like other aspects of Victorian and Edwardian ideology, faced the challenges of turbulent and changing times. This book exaimines how the philosophies of sportsmanship and fair play, as well as sporting elitism and imperialism, fared in a period of growing commercialism, an expanding electorate, industrialization, Irish nationalism, the suffragist movement, the Boer War and mounting international tension. The study expands upon many of the complex themes introduced in Derek Birley's earlier book, Sport and the Making of Britian