The Army Isn’t All Work’

This book is visually beautiful. From the full-colour reproduction of a recruiting poster that forms the cover image to the numerous black-and-white photographs of men engaged in sporting activity that liberally illustrate it, the book is lovely to look at. And these images form only a small part of the rich seam of primary source material that James D. Campbell mines in his examination of the role and development of physical culture in the British Army between 1860 and 1920. Focusing on the formalisation of physical culture within the army from the formation of the Army Gymnastic Staff through to the creation of the Army Sport Control Board, ‘the final achievement of the goal so many of the supporters of Army sport had long being working for’ (p. 191), Campbell utilises official reports, personal accounts, regimental journals and government memoranda and publications to produce an intriguing history of an often misrepresented aspect of British social, cultural and military history

Art · Government (linguistics · Management · Physical culture · Political science · Visual arts · White (mutation · Work (physics · Engineering · History · Law · Martial Arts: Techniques, Psychology, and Education · Medicine · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts · Sports, Gender, and Society