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Sport and the British

Sport and the British: Episode 21: War Games

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Episode 21

Episode 21: War Games

BBC Radio 4 Extra - Sport and the British, War Games

Clare Balding explores the vital role sport has played during both world wars.

Clare Balding is at 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.

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 walking towards a dressing station. Yet in the background there are groups of men playing football. As Prof. Tony Collins of De Montfort University explains, sport became an essential part of army life, alleviating the boredom and the terror, by 1916 there was a football ground in each brigade area of the Western Front.
During the Second World War, Prof Tony Mason explains the importance of sport to those captured and detained in German prisoner of war camps, with football, in particular being used as a way of providing entertainment for troops overseas. 

The series was made in partnership with The International Centre for Sport History and Culture at De Montfort University, Leicester.

The Reader is Alun Raglan
Technical presentation: John Benton
Producer: Garth Brameld.

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Clare Balding charts how sport has shaped the British and how Britain has shaped sport

Clare Balding presents a 30-part series charting how sport has shaped the British and how Britain has shaped sport

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BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

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