Painting of Daniel Mendoza

Sport and leisure

England captain Bobby Moore

My history hero: Bobby Moore.

The bloody world of Georgian female boxing.

Q&AWhy do we say 'saved by the bell'?

Relief of a charioteer

Q&AWho was the highest-paid sportsman in history?

Photo of Uruguay football players celebrating victory

Q&AWho won the first FIFA World Cup?

Yorkshire’s top 10 historical sites as county prepares for Tour de France 2014

English gardens and Latin American football.

Brazil: where sport and politics have always mixed.

Ed Morrison with Nelson Mandela. (Image: Ed Morrison)

When I met Mandela: 1995 Rugby World Cup final

Sport offered the two sides the perfect stage on which to get one over on the 'enemy', says Dominic Sandbrook. Pictured here is a queue for a football match between Arsenal and Dynamo Moscow. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The Cold War in your living room.

The master of dressage.

A photograph of photographer George Lowe and Cho Oyu mountain

In picturesThe conquest of Everest.

Moscow 1980: going to the games.

Scenes of frivolity in the 16th century. (Culture Club/Getty Images)

Bad sports? Puritan attempts to ban games in 17th-century England.

English medical student Roger Bannister

A history of British sport.

American golfer Bobby Jones practising his swing on the roof of the Savoy Hotel in London. (Photo by Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)

My history hero: Robert Tyre Jones (1902–71)

Pieces from the Lewis Chessmen, some of the earliest chessmen to survive.

In pictures: what are the Lewis Chessmen?

Ye olde travel guide: Olympia 480 Bc.

England and Wales: best of enemies?.

Communist sport: Cold War copycats.

BBC History Magazine

Historians are wrong to kick football into touch

Sunbathers enjoy some fun and games at a tennis court near a lido at Castle Mill, Cheshire, August 1936

The 1930s: When the future looked bright.

Detail from the Devonshire Hunting Tapestries, showing hawking. Made in Tournai in the 15th century. (Photo by CM Dixon/Print Collector/Getty Images)

The LibraryThe medieval huntress.

The LibraryThomas Becket and 16th-century swimming.