Scholarship for its own sake has rather gone out of fashion, although I’m sure Spectator readers would be the last people to worry about that. But what of scholarship for barely any sake at all? A book like this, the result of enormously diligent library ferreting, doesn’t have any pressing reason to exist, but I am glad it does. Its pointlessness is its pleasure. Edward Brooke-Hitching has subtitled his work ‘The Most Dangerous & Bizarre Sports in History’, but what actually characterises these 90 pastimes is that no one plays them any more, usually for good reasons. Some of them were simply too cruel.
Sports such as eel-pulling, pig-sticking, cat-headbutting and fox-tossing all fall under this purview: these ‘games’ are senselessly brutal, but to players of the era they were merely light pre-supper entertainment.
Others were too dangerous.
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