Have nations always used sport to launder their reputations?

Simon Kuper World Cup Fever A footballing journey in nine tournaments 352pp. Profile. £20. Jonathan Wilson The Power and the Glory A new history of the World Cup 608pp. Abacus. £25. In 1994, a column

“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.” Antonio Gramsci’s words, written in prison near Bari almost 100 years ago, ring out to us now. The politi

Organisers claim the Enhanced Games is a science-backed effort to help humans reach their full physical potential, while detractors call it the ‘Doping Olympics’ and see it as a threat to sport. What’s really going on?

BACK IN THE 1980S, AROUND WHEN I FIRST MOVED to the U.S. from Mexico, Republican Congressman Jack Kemp, then one of conservatism’s brightest stars, who’d quarterbacked the Buffalo Bills before going i

Once the reserve of mud-caked public schoolboys, the rugby shirt is now a bona fide sartorial superstar, embraced by outfitters across the globe,

In spring 1953, Britain was looking forward. After the trauma of the war and its aftermath, people were no longer focused simply on surviving. Thanks in part to the postwar settlement and welfare stat