On 30 May, I gave a talk at Dulwich Hamlet in conjunction with the University of Wolverhampton’s Football and War Network and Stanchion Books. The topic of my talk was ‘The History of Football and Politics’, and I explored:
- When did football first get ‘political’?
- Why is the sport so effective as a political tool?
- Who was the first politician to exploit the sport for propaganda?
- Football in the Spanish Civil War, and during and after Franco
- Footballing partisans in World War II
- Football against dictatorships
- Modern progressive clubs
My talk was based on the research I carried out for my first two books, Origin Stories: The Pioneers Who Took Football to the World and The Defiant: A History of Football Against Fascism.
Please have a listen and let me know what you think. The podcast proper will be back later this year.