Book excerpt: Providing a social, economic and political study of field sports and those other activities and customs labelled as rural sports, from the earliest of times to the present day in all of the United Kingdom and Ireland. This book brings together several distinct types of traditional rural sports with particular emphasis on the social history and 'traditional' aspects. It contains several hundred entries focusing on individual sports and others providing analysis of key concepts, themes and terminologies. The Encyclopedia of Traditional British Rural Sports is an invaluable reference that provides students, scholars and sports enthusiasts with a focussed and authoritative source of information on the history and culture of rural sport in Britain.