In Sport and the Military: The British Armed Forces, 1880–1960, authors Tony Mason and Eliza Riedi provide a rich and illuminating study of the sporting life of British soldiers at home and abroad. Drawing on an impressive range of archival materials, this book traces the growth of organized sport in the British military system from its introduction in the Victorian army and navy, its official integration during the Great War, to its high point before the abolishment of National Service. Detailed, thoroughly well organized, and written in a lively and engaging prose, Sport and the Military serves as a significant contribution to British military and social history. This book is testament to the value of studying the history of sport.

As the cradle of modern sport, Great Britain played a pivotal role in the growth and diffusion of organized sport during the second half of the nineteenth century. Fueled by the twin forces of industrialization and urbanization, boxing, cricket, football, and rugby union became not mere pastimes for the British but also passions transcending and reconfiguring class, racial, and eventually gender boundaries and pervading social and literary discourses. As Mason and Riedi argue, the advent of organized sport in the British armed services coincided with its broader growth and development throughout Britain during the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. In response to the prevailing “cult of athleticism” that dominated the English public school system, as well as broader attempts to improve the conditions of military service, British military leaders accepted sport—albeit gradually—as an effective tool for boosting morale and esprit de corps, developing physical fitness, and maximizing recruitment and retention. Sport also provided more overarching benefits: fostering intense loyalty to regiments, preserving the broader military hierarchy through the separation of ranks, and acting as a healthy corrective to more nefarious diversions such as drunkenness and prostitution.

Despite its widely acknowledged utility, Mason and Riedi reveal that the introduction of organized sport in the British armed services was primarily a grassroots movement rather than a product of official military planning. Through the creation of organizing bodies such as the Army Football Association, junior officers and rank-and-file soldiers provided the formal organization and administration that propelled sport throughout the various branches of the British armed services. Interregimental and interdivisional rivalries flourished across a broader range of sports, as did the frequency of competitive fixtures between British military personnel and natives from such far-flung imperial outposts as Hong Kong and the Indian subcontinent. Sport quickly crossed class boundaries, capturing the attentions of a remarkably homogenous officer corps reared in the “fanatically sporty, rigorously anti-intellectual” British public school system (64). Mason and Riedi contend that British military officers embraced equestrian sports such as polo and hunting as a badge of social exclusivity, as well as a widely accepted training simulation for direct warfare. It would take a series of humiliating defeats against a vastly outnumbered band of Boer rebels before Edwardian military reformers identified the British officer sporting culture as being responsible for both inadequate standards of military education and technical inefficiencies on the battlefield.

Against the backdrop of a rising chorus of condemnation, the Great War marked the official and widespread integration of sport in the British military system. Mason and Riedi reveal in impressive detail how sports played a significant role on the front lines. Football and boxing, among other sports, encouraged fitness and the fighting spirit, while providing a much needed distraction from the absolute destruction that engulfed British servicemen in the trenches. Sport also played a pivotal role on the Home Front. The British armed services employed sport for recruiting and fund-raising drives; for consolidating British, Dominion, and Allied relations through friendly competition; and also as a means for providing cheap entertainment and raising morale in a time of wartime austerity. Its substantial military utility even fed the belief that sport had won the Great War, a maxim that Mason and Riedi assert ensured its survival in the British military system, even in the face of a severe postwar economic recession and a broader restructuring of British political, military, and imperial ambitions.

During the interwar years, British military embraced an anachronistic Edwardian amateur ideal, banning prize money and placing a greater emphasis on sport’s moral value. Reflecting the military’s broader reluctance to modernize and mechanize, British military sport became increasingly inhibited by this view, as exemplified by the frequency with which the British armed services suffered heavy defeats against their Allies. Yet, as the authors extensively detail, British servicemen were still surprisingly well represented at the international level in athletic, equestrian, and rugby union competitions and events. The Second World War eventually penetrated the amateur sporting seal, as British military leaders actively encouraged the use of professional sporting stars to provide entertainment to troops stationed both at home and abroad. As Mason and Riedi conclude, however, the armed services eventually reversed their wartime stance by focusing on participatory sport throughout the postwar National Service years.

In summation, Sport and the Military has only one minor flaw. Reflecting the male-dominated world of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century military life, the experiences of British servicewomen are given a fairly cursory treatment. A greater focus on the female voice would have enhanced this outstanding historical study of service sport. This minor criticism aside, Tony Mason and Eliza Riedi have produced an excellent book: one that I anticipate will make a significant contribution to British military scholarship and to the ever-increasing body of British sport history.