Clare Balding charts the role sport has played in Britain. This 30 part series will be broadcast Monday –Friday beginning on Monday 30th January at 13.45. The episodes are 15 minutes in duration and the episodes are added to the podcast daily.
Episodes available:
Indefinitely 
Fri, 9 Mar 12
Duration:
14 mins
Prog. 30 –The State of Play Clare Balding, with Professors Richard Holt, Tony Collins and Mike Cronin explores the cultural importance of the great triviality that is sport.
Thu, 8 Mar 12
Duration:
14 mins
Prog. 29 – The Globalisation of the Game Clare Balding explores the way global television has changed our relationship with sport forever.
Wed, 7 Mar 12
Duration:
14 mins
Prog. 28 – Rugby’s Big Bang Clare Balding explores why Rugby Union tried to stand firm against the encroaching tide of professionalism and in August 1995, lost.
Tue, 6 Mar 12
Duration:
13 mins
Prog. 27 – Golden Girls Clare Balding looks at the female British athletes of the 1960's who finally took centre stage on the podium and in the press.
Mon, 5 Mar 12
Duration:
13 mins
Prog. 26 – Sport for All 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?
Fri, 2 Mar 12
Duration:
13 mins
Prog. 25 – Beating us at our own game 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.
Thu, 1 Mar 12
Duration:
13 mins
Prog. 24 – The Gentleman Amateur 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.
Wed, 29 Feb 12
Duration:
13 mins
Prog 23 –Driving Innovation Clare Balding discovers how 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.
Tue, 28 Feb 12
Duration:
11 mins
Prog 22: Broadcasting to the Nation Clare Balding discovers how the birth of broadcasting changed British sport for ever.
Mon, 27 Feb 12
Duration:
13 mins
Prog 21: War Games: 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.
Fri, 24 Feb 12
Duration:
13 mins
Prog. 20 Ireland: North of the Border While sport is endlessly talked of as a force for unity, today Clare Balding's in Belfast on the Falls Road, where sport was just another arena to reinforce divisions that rent the community in two.
Thu, 23 Feb 12
Duration:
14 mins
Prog. 19 Ireland: Politics on the Pitch Clare Balding visits Croke Park in Dublin, to discover the story behind the formation of the Gaelic Athletic Association and it's founder Michael Cusack.
Wed, 22 Feb 12
Duration:
14 mins
Prog. 18 Welsh Rugby and its National Heroes Clare Balding's at Cardiff Arms Park looking at the vital role rugby has played in shaping Welsh identity: the stadium was built to be an emblem of national pride, a fortress for Welsh sport in its capital city.
Tue, 21 Feb 12
Duration:
14 mins
Prog. 17 Anyone But England Clare Balding is at Hampden Park in Glasgow, examining the part football has played in shaping Scotland's national identity and its changing relationship with England.
Mon, 20 Feb 12
Duration:
14 mins
Prog. 16 Cricket And The English Hero If there's one sport that embodies Englishness, it's cricket. Clare Balding looks at how and why W.G.Grace, in the nineteenth century and Jack Hobbs, in the twentieth, became the opitome of a national sporting hero.
Fri, 17 Feb 12
Duration:
14 mins
Prog. 15 A Bit Of A Flutter Clare Balding looks at the role gambling has played in our relationship with sport as she continues her exploration into how Britain made sport and sport made Britain.
Thu, 16 Feb 12
Duration:
14 mins
Prog. 14 Women Between the Wars Clare Balding discovers how working women finally got their sporting chance, through the leisure activities offered by many major employers, at the turn of the twentieth century.
Wed, 15 Feb 12
Duration:
14 mins
Prog. 13 Fighting Back Clare Balding looks at the relationship between boxing and Britain's ethnic minorities.She visits the Lynn Boxing Club in South London.
Tue, 14 Feb 12
Duration:
14 mins
Prog. 12 Tennis and Golf in Suburbia Clare Balding continues to explore the history of sport in Britain and visits one of the oldest tennis clubs in the country in Leamington Spa. In Victorian Britain, lawn tennis took off thanks to the growing numbers of the middle class.
Mon, 13 Feb 12
Duration:
14 mins
Prog. 11 Rugby's Great Split As Clare Balding continues to explore the unique relationship Britain has had with sport, she tells a tale of civil-war within a sport: rugby.
Fri, 10 Feb 12
Duration:
12 mins
Prog. 10 Exporting Football CLARE BALDING charts how Britain spread the passion for football around the world. She particularly looks at South America where the game is central to their way of life.
Thu, 9 Feb 12
Duration:
13 mins
Prog. 9 The Dawn of Professional Football CLARE BALDING tells the story of how football went from an amateur pasttime to big business and it all started in the Lancashire mill town of Preston.
Wed, 8 Feb 12
Duration:
14 mins
Prog. 8 The Formal Empire CLARE BALDING explains how sport became a way of transmitting British values around the globe; it was a connection to the mother country and a means of educating the Empire's native subjects.
Tue, 7 Feb 12
Duration:
14 mins
Prog. 7 The Corinthian Ideal Clare Balding examines the era when footballers were expected to be gentlemen,both on and off the pitch.
Mon, 6 Feb 12
Duration:
14 mins
Prog 6; Playing Like Ladies CLARE BALDING discovers that the freedoms Victorian public school girls found on the sports field were a precursor to the political and social freedoms that would change British society forever.
Fri, 3 Feb 12
Duration:
14 mins
Prog. 5 The Making of Men As CLARE BALDING continues to chart the way the British have shaped sport and sport has shaped Britain, she visits Rugby to discover how the visionary headmaster, Thomas Arnold, ensured games lay at the heart of school life, producing men ready to rule.
Thu, 2 Feb 12
Duration:
14 mins
Prog.4 The unsporting side of sport CLARE BALDING watches all sections of society gather on Epsom Downs to watch the Derby, the biggest day of the flat racing year. In her exploration of the way Britain has shaped sport and sport has shaped the British, Clare looks at the socially unifying power of the race course and the way sport and gambling have become inextricably linked.
Wed, 1 Feb 12
Duration:
14 mins
Prog. 3 The Bare Fists of Boxing CLARE BALDING explores the way the British have shaped sport and sport has shaped Britain. An ability to box defined the 19th century alpha male. No gloves or weapons, pugilism was pure, painful and deeply patriotic.
Tue, 31 Jan 12
Duration:
14 mins
Prog. 2 A Level Playing Field CLARE BALDING explores how the British shaped sport and sport shaped Britain. If the French had played cricket, would they have prevented the revolution? Clare visits Broadhalfpenny Down in Hampshire, the original home of Hambledon Cricket Club, that's widely regarded as the birthplace of modern cricket.
Mon, 30 Jan 12
Duration:
14 mins
Sport and The British Prog. 1 The Rise of Olympism CLARE BALDING charts how Britain has shaped sport and sport has shaped the British.In this thirty part narrative history series with the help of the academic team from the International Centre for Sport History and Culture at De Montfort University, Clare looks at the unique and vital role sport has played, and continues to play, in our national life. As we gear up for the 2012 games, in this first programme she looks at the birth of the modern olympics movement.
Mon, 23 Jan 12
Duration:
1 min
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