Can We Have Our Balls Back, Please?: How the British Invented Sport

Now updated for the 2012 Olympics

Americans may like to think they invented baseball (even if Jane Austen wrote about it decades earlier).

And the French might be proud of founding the modern Olympics (when, in fact, a Shropshire doctor beat them to it by forty years).

But it was the British that gave sport to the world.

From the beginnings of 'the beautiful game' - raucous matches of folk football with hundreds of players - to the original bowls (a thin excuse for drunken gambling), here is everything you need to know about the very British love of sports and all the great games it's produced.

Because, even if we rarely win them, it's good to know we invented them.

'Wonderful.' The Times

'Chest-swelling reading. Thorough, sound in judgment and light of touch . . . a work of both reference and unexpected pleasures.' Sunday Times