Clare Balding with Professors Richard Holt, Tony Collins and Mike Cronin explores the cultural importance of the great triviality that is sport. The series was made in partnership with The International Centre for Sports History and Culture at de Montfort University. Producer: Lucy Lunt Executive Editor: Ian Bent.

Clare Balding explores the way global television has changed our relationship with sport forever. It's no longer seasonal and is bankrolled by TV income and it bows to TV's needs. This series was made in partnership with The International Centre for Sport History and Culture. Technical presentation: John Benton Producer: Sara Conkey.

Clare Balding explores why Rugby Union tried to stand firm against the encroaching tide of professionalism and in August 1995, lost. One by one the old bastions of the sporting gentleman had fallen in the 1960s and 1970s. Cricket, tennis and athletics had all abandoned the Victorian distinction between amateurs and professionals. The word 'amateur' had almost become an insult. But of all the major sports, only one continued to uphold the banner - rugby union. It had introduced strict amateur...

In the final week of her series exploring how sport made Britain and Britain made sport, Clare Balding looks at the female British athletes of the 1960's who finally took centre stage on the podium and in the press. She visits the home of the Birchfield Harriers in Birmingham, one of the country's leading athletics clubs. There she meets Norma Blaine who'd been coaching young women athletes since 1951. Norma remembers when women were unable to compete in any distance race over two hundred...

Clare Balding asks why and when did the British government get involved in sport. How did sport become part of politics, in a country which had always prided itself on keeping them apart? The Nazis threw immense resources behind the German team for the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, while the British Foreign Office still thought sport should be, ' a private affair between private individuals' free of government interference. However by the 1950's post war politicians began to think that physical...

Clare Balding takes a look at Britain's most successful export ever - football. Yet in giving it to others, the British lost control of the game they had created and crafted. Clare, with the help of Prof Tony Mason of The International Centre for Sport History and Culture at De Montfort University, looks at our troubled relationship with the sport's governing body FIFA and asks if a British team will ever again come close to winning the World Cup. Readers: Sean Baker and Nyasha...

Clare Balding's at Lords Cricket ground in London to explore the demise of the amateur gentleman and the rise of the professional player, as the 1960's saw the beginning of a new, more egalitarian era, in British sport. In all walks of life, Britain's 'Establishment' was being scrutinized, criticised and satirised so it was hardly surprising that sport and particularly cricket should come under fire. Dr Dilwyn Porter of The International Centre for Sport History and Culture at De Montfort...

Clare Balding continues to explore how Britain shaped sport and sport shaped Britain. Horse racing may be the sport of kings but the princes, playboys and plutocrats of the modern era have preferred motor racing and the British have been at the wheel throughout. Stirling Moss, Graham Hill, Jackie Stewart, James Hunt, Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button have all led the way but in the early days women were central to this story too, with Mrs EM Thomas being the awarded the first 120 mph badge at...

Clare Balding discovers how the birth of broadcasting changed British sport for ever. Radio played a crucial role in the popularisation of sport, suddenly you didn't need to be at the event to know exactly what happened or to be swept up in the excitement of the match. Jean Seaton, the BBC's historian explains how the events that were chosen for outside broadcast began to provide a secular calendar for the year, with the schedule being dominated by the most commentator friendly sports;...

Week five of the series that explores how sport made Britain and Britain made sport. In this episode Clare Balding visits The Imperial War Museum to discover the vital role sport has played, both on the battle field and on the home front, during both World Wars. She starts in the Hall of Remembrance in front of John Singer Sargent's, Gassed, an oil painting more than twenty feet long, depicting the aftermath of a mustard gas attack during the First World War, with a line of wounded soldiers...

While sport is endlessly talked of as a force for unity, in today's edition of Sport and the British, Clare Balding's in Belfast on the Falls Road, where it's clear that here sport was just another arena to reinforce divisions that rent the community in two. In Northern Ireland the sporting choices for people were, for so long, based on their religious and political backgrounds. In soccer there was one team for the Catholics, Belfast Celtic, Linfield for the Protestants. Clare hears about the...

Clare Balding visits Croke Park in Dublin, to discover the story behind the formation of the Gaelic Athletic Association and it's founder Michael Cusack. All this week in Sport and the British Clare has been exploring how sport defined and gave an independence to the nations of the British Isles, nowhere is this more evident and vocal than in Ireland. The GAA defined what it was to be Irish - meaning how far removed that is from being English and hurling and Irish football were a way of...

Clare Balding's at Cardiff Arms Park for this edition of the series that explores how sport made Britain and Britain made sport. Here she looks at the vital role rugby has played in shaping Welsh identity; the stadium was built to be an emblem of national pride, a fortress for Welsh sport in its capital city. She talks to the legendary Welsh captain and scrum half, Gareth Edwards about Wales' glory days of the sixties and seventies and the impact the introduction of professionalism had on the...

Clare Balding continues her investigation into how sport shaped Britain and Britain shaped sport. Today we join her at Hampden Park in Glasgow as she explores the part football has played in shaping Scotland's national identity and its changing relationship with England. Clare talks to Hugh McIlvaney about why supporting, 'anyone but England' is still part of the Scottish mindset. This series has been made in partnership with the The International Centre for Sports History and Culture, De...

Clare Balding continues her investigation into how sport shaped Britain and Britain shaped sport. In this weeks programmes she looks at how sport unites us all when we get behind out national teams and no more so, than when the character of that team can be personified by one person. If there's one sport that embodies Englishness, it's cricket and in this programme she looks at how and why W.G.Grace, in the nineteenth century and Jack Hobbs, in the twentieth, became the epitome of a national...

Clare Balding looks at the role gambling has played in our relationship with sport as she continues her exploration into how Britain made sport and sport made Britain. Betting has played a crucial role in the way games developed, it gave incentive to competition which in turn necessitated clear rules. Establishing who's won and who's lost is crucial but who managed to have a flutter and where was a matter riven with class distinctions as Clare discovers. Reader, Sean Baker Producer: Sara Conkey.

Clare Balding discovers how working women finally got their sporting chance, through the leisure activities offered by many major employers, at the turn of the twentieth century.The number of female workers in factories, large retailers and service industries was growing hugely and the employers decided to provide them with sports facilities and equipment. Clare visits Bournville, home of Cadbury's, who, like the Lyons company, famous for their tea shops, or Boots in Nottingham, gave access...

Clare Balding looks at the relationship between boxing and Britain's ethnic minorities.Through the centuries, immigrants have had to literally fight for recognition in Britain and that means with their fists. As Clare continues to explore how sport made Britain and Britain made sport, she visits the Lynn Boxing Club in South London.Founded in 1892, it's the oldest continuing amateur boxing club in the country. It was around the time that bare knuckle boxing was starting to decline and amateur...

Clare Balding continues to explore the history of sport in Britain and in today's programme visits one of the oldest tennis clubs in the country in Leamington Spa. In Victorian Britain, lawn tennis took off thanks to the growing numbers of a whole new strata of society - the middle class. Living in suburbia with clean air, space and leisure time, tennis and golf became increasingly popular pastimes. There were 250 clubs in the Lawn Tennis Association by 1900 rising to 3000 by the 1930's and...

As Clare Balding continues to explore the unique relationship Britain has had with sport, in today's programme she tells a tale of lies, witch hunts, bigotry and the north/south divide.This isn't the story of a battle-torn country, but of a civil-war within a sport with rugby becoming a symbol of class division and splitting in two. From the home of The Wigan Wanderers, Professor Tony Collins of The International Centre for Sports History and Culture at De Montfort University explains the...

Clare Balding charts how Britain spread the passion for football around the world. She particularly looks at South America where the game is central to their way of life. The FIFA World Cup has been staged 19 times and on 9 of those occasions, it has been won by either Brazil, Argentina or Uruguay. Professor Tony Mason from De Montfort University explains that unlike cricket and rugby which was spread by soldiers, civil servants and settlers in British colonies, football took a different...

Clare Balding tells the story of how football went from an amateur pastime to big business and it all started in the Lancashire mill town of Preston. In the season of 1888-89 The Invincibles, as the Preston team were known, were unbeaten in the League and the FA cup, becoming football's first double winners. As Professor Matthew Taylor of De Montfort University explains, their success was down to the vision of one man, their manager, William Suddell, a local mill manager. Clare visits...

In the nineteenth century a quarter of the world's habitable countries were part of the British Empire and if trade was the driving force behind it's expansion, sport was the glue that helped keep it together. CLARE BALDING explains how sport became a way of transmitting British values around the globe; it was a connection to the mother country and a means of educating the Empire's native subjects. Professor Richard Holt of The International Centre for Sports History and Culture at De...

Clare Balding examines the era when footballers were expected to be gentlemen,both on and off the pitch. The Football Association founded in 1863 was set up to ensure the boys that had attended the public schools of England could continue to play the game in adulthood by an agreed set of rules.They embodied the Corinthian spirit, the amateur ideal, one must not be seen to take sport too seriously, or to try too hard, superiority must be gained with apparent effortlessness. Clare looks at the...