Sports Knight

Event information

In 2026 it will be a hundred years since the first person was knighted for services to sport. This talk will explore some of the life stories of the nation’s sporting knights and dames. There will, inevitably, be more men than women, more rich than poor, more White people than Black people. That, in itself, is revealing. For, no matter what we may think of the selection process, the stories of the sporting heroes who the government has chosen to honour provide an alternative history of British sport (and society) over the past century. The six-time Olympic champion Chris Hoy once confided to an interviewer, ‘To become a knight from riding a bike; it’s mad!’ And he is right, it is mad. But, just possibly, as this talk hopes to demonstrate, there is some method in the madness.

Peter Donaldson teaches modern British history at the University of Kent. He is the author of four other books, including And the Winner Is: 70 Years of the BBC Sports Personality of the Year, which was featured in The Times and on Radio 5 Live, and Sport, War and the British, which was shortlisted for the British Society of Sports History’s Lord Aberdare Literary Prize. He has yet to be knighted for sport or nominated for SPOTY.