Sport and Leisure

The British holiday camp: all-inclusive seaside resorts with chalets, entertainment and organised fun, invented in 1936 and still running at three sites.

The playground game in which two players take turns striking each other's horse chestnut on a string until one shatters.

England's summer sport: a bat-and-ball game of enormous subtlety played over formats lasting from three hours to five days, and the source…

Walking the uplands of northern England — a distinct British tradition with its own vocabulary, its own guidebooks, and a national habit…

Association football, called soccer only in America: Britain's dominant sport, invented here, and closer to a tribal identity than a pastime.

Britain's outdoor public swimming pools — mostly built in the 1930s in art deco style, largely closed in the 1980s, and now…

Searching the Thames foreshore at low tide for objects the river has preserved — once the work of the destitute, now a…

Propelling a flat-bottomed boat along a shallow river with a long pole — a summer institution in Oxford and Cambridge, and a…

The five-day horse racing meeting in Berkshire each June: the most prestigious in Britain, attended by the monarch, and governed by an…

A contact sport invented at an English school, played in two separate codes — union and league — divided by rules, geography…

A cue sport invented by British army officers in India, played on a twelve-foot table, and improbably one of the most watched…

England's top football division: twenty clubs, thirty-eight games each, and the richest and most watched domestic league in the world.

The weeknight quiz held in pubs across Britain: teams of four to six, a pound a head, six rounds and a picture…

The British seaside resort: piers, promenades, fish and chips, deckchairs and donkey rides — a Victorian invention, badly damaged by cheap flights,…

The oldest and most prestigious tennis tournament in the world, played on grass in south-west London every summer, with strict all-white clothing…