Introduction: reflecting on the past, present and future of the British Society of Sports History

Abstract

As the Chair of the British Society of Sports History during its 40th anniversary year, I was delighted to be asked to write the Introduction to this special issue, celebrating four decades of our existence as the BSSH. I want to emphasise at the outset, though, that the hard work which has gone into conceiving, commissioning, collating and editing the articles which appear in the following pages is that of the special issue editors, Conor Heffernan and Katie Taylor. It was in the first year of my term as Chair, November 2019 back in the era before ‘social distancing’ became a regular part of all our vocabularies that I had the good fortune of being sat next to Professor Richard Holt at a dinner in Leicester. Towards the end of the evening, Dick leaned back in his chair, looked over at me, and remarked that he felt sure the 40th anniversary of the Society would soon be approaching, and what would we be doing to celebrate? Truth be told, I had given it very little thought; had it not been for that fortuitous conversation, this special issue (and the surrounding 40th anniversary activities) might well never have come to bear. Not for the first time, the field of British sports history finds itself in enormous debt to Professor Holt. When I went away to read up on the history of the BSSH, I found that in common with many sports there is some dispute as to the exact founding ‘date’ of the Society. J.A. Mangan has it as March 1983; but Carol Osborne and Dil Porter’s recent hunt in the BSSH archives has uncovered an ‘inaugural meeting’ of BSSH dated 21March 1982, as part of a conference at the University of Liverpool organised by Richard Cox. After discussion, we as a Board of Trustees were nonetheless content to settle on 2022 (40 years since the first BSSH conference took place) as the year in which to focus our anniversary celebrations.