Cricket and the English Hero
Clare Balding investigates the role sporting heroes, like cricketers WG Grace and Jack Hobbs, play in shaping national identity.
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 sporting hero. Clare visits Lords Cricket ground and the Oval to discover more.
She also talks to Professor Richard Holt from The International Centre for Sports History and Culture at De Montfort University, Simon Rae, a biographer of W.G.Grace and broadcaster David Rayvern Allen. The readers are:Jo Munro and Brian Bowles.
The programme is produced in Birmingham by Garth Brameld.
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- Mon 20 Feb 201213:45BBC Radio 4
- Mon 21 Jul 201414:15BBC Radio 4 Extra
- Tue 22 Jul 201400:15BBC Radio 4 Extra
- Mon 15 Aug 201614:15BBC Radio 4 Extra
- Tue 16 Aug 201602:15BBC Radio 4 Extra
- Mon 2 Jul 201814:15BBC Radio 4 Extra
- Tue 3 Jul 201802:15BBC Radio 4 Extra
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