Sport and the British

Clare Balding with Professors Richard Holt, Tony Collins and Mike Cronin explores the cultural importance of the great triviality that is sport.

Clare Balding explores the way global television has changed our relationship with sport forever. It's no longer seasonal and is bankrolled by TV income and it bows to TV's needs.

Technical presentation: John Benton

Clare Balding explores why Rugby Union tried to stand firm against the encroaching tide of professionalism and in August 1995, lost.

Technical presentation: John Benton

In the final week of her series exploring how sport made Britain and Britain made sport, Clare Balding looks at the female British athletes of the 1960's who finally took centre stage on the podium and in the press.

Clare Balding asks why and when did the British government get involved in sport. How did sport become part of politics, in a country which had always prided itself on keeping them apart?

Clare Balding takes a look at Britain's most successful export ever - football. Yet in giving it to others, the British lost control of the game they had created and crafted. Clare, with the help of Prof Tony Mason of The International Centre for Sport History and Culture at De Montfort University, looks at our troubled relationship with the sport's governing body FIFA and asks if a British team will ever again come close to winning the World Cup.

Readers: Sean Baker and Nyasha Hatendi

Clare Balding's at Lords Cricket ground in London to explore the demise of the amateur gentleman and the rise of the professional player, as the 1960's saw the beginning of a new, more egalitarian era, in British sport.

In all walks of life, Britain's 'Establishment' was being scrutinized, criticised and satirised so it was hardly surprising that sport and particularly cricket should come under fire.

Dr Dilwyn Porter of The International Centre for Sport History and Culture at De Montfort University explains how the MCC had to finally abandon its long-standing distinction between gentlemen and players or amateurs and professionals. The distinction epitomised by David Sheppard (later Bishop of Liverpool) and Yorkshireman, Fred Trueman.

Readers: Sean Baker and Nyasha Hatendi.

Clare Balding continues to explore how Britain shaped sport and sport shaped Britain. Horse racing may be the sport of kings but the princes, playboys and plutocrats of the modern era have preferred motor racing and the British have been at the wheel throughout. Stirling Moss, Graham Hill, Jackie Stewart, James Hunt, Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button have all led the way but in the early days women were central to this story too, with Mrs EM Thomas being the awarded the first 120 mph badge at Brooklands in 1928.

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

Technical presentation: John Benton

Clare Balding discovers how the birth of broadcasting changed British sport for ever. Radio played a crucial role in the popularisation of sport, suddenly you didn't need to be at the event to know exactly what happened or to be swept up in the excitement of the match. Jean Seaton, the BBC's historian explains how the events that were chosen for outside broadcast began to provide a secular calendar for the year, with the schedule being dominated by the most commentator friendly sports; football and tennis were a fit, flying fishing and pigeon racing were not.

We hear some of the earliest and most celebrated sports broadcasters ; George ' by Jove' Allison, Raymond Baxter, Brian Johnson and John Arlott, who describes the man responsible for the first sports programming on the BBC, Seymour Joly de Lotbiniere.

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

Readers: Stuart McLoughlin and Jo Munro

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.

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