Abstract

The Public and Popular History seminar is pleased to announce this term’s highlight, on Tuesday 17th, at 5pm, in the Bateman Auditorium in Gonville and Caius: a panel discussion entitled “How Football Explains British History”, featuring this country’s leading football experts with a history background: Jonathan Wilson (Guardian football correspondent & book author), Kevin Moore (Director of the Football Museum), and Philippe Auclair (France Football).

How do we account for the very strange, almost unexplainable absence of the world’s most popular and most universal game in mainstream historiography? Why is it that cultural historians have produced more research on opera and avantgarde theatre than on football? And even those allegedly interested in popular culture rarely have anything to say about it – perhaps because it is too popular for its own good? This panel discussion will engage with how exactly football history links up with British history, and how Marxist, structuralist and Annales historiography did away with the foremost cultural phenomenon of the 20th century, and got away with it. Everyone welcome!