The Battle of the Sexes

Available for over a year

In 1973, the world sat agog at an exhibition tennis match between 55-year-old former Wimbledon champion Bobby Riggs and the then women’s number one, Billie Jean King in what had been billed as the Battle of the Sexes. The show down became a cause celebre for male chauvinists and feminists, with the former claiming that it would prove, once and for all, that men were superior when it came to sport. Now the subject of a new Hollywood movie of the same name, Isabel Fraser looks at what the cultural and social backdrop to the original match.