A brief history of Welsh football through the 1970s Admiral Shirt
Image credit: The Welsh Football Collection, Wrexham County Borough Museum & Archives. This cotton Wales football shirt was worn by Nick Deacy of PSV Eindhoven in an under 21s international match against Scotland in 1977. The two nations had been competing against each other since 1876, making it the second oldest international fixture in world…
Christmas and Mass Observation: Studying Traditions, Emotions and People
By the time Mass Observation was established in the 1930s, Christmas had become an integral part of British culture. Although its form and meaning varied between individuals and classes, it was something that everyone interacted with in one way or another. It upset and angered some but more often Christmas was a moment of joy,…
Why history matters
A short video I made for a Welsh Government event about history in the Curriculum for Wales.
A brief history of work Christmas parties
This is an extract from Martin Johnes, Christmas and the British: A Modern History (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016) One reason for the ebbing of work was excitement over Christmas parties. These were not new phenomenon – some late nineteenth-century factories had held them for example – but they undoubtedly increased in number in the middle of the twentieth century and by…
Anglo-Welsh football relations: a history
This article was first published in Tom Gibbons & Dominic Malcolm (eds), Sport and English National Identity in a ‘Disunited Kingdom’ (Routledge, 2017) All national identities owe something to relations with an ‘other’. As Linda Colley (1994: 6) put it, ‘men and women decide who they are by reference to who and what they are…
Why fans still matter: quick thoughts on the European Super League
Some of the reactions to the planned European Super League give the impression that money and profit are something new in football. Yet money, and arguments over money, are central to football’s history. There were loud and emotional complaints that football was all about cash as early as the 1880s. The Victorian elite complained that…
Loading…
Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.
Martin Johnes 