Painting of Daniel Mendoza

Sport and leisure

Yorkshire’s top 10 historical sites as county prepares for Tour de France 2014

English gardens and Latin American football. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Brazil: where sport and politics have always mixed

Ed Morrison with Nelson Mandela. (Image: Ed Morrison)

When I met Mandela: 1995 Rugby World Cup final

Sport offered the two sides the perfect stage on which to get one over on the 'enemy', says Dominic Sandbrook. Pictured here is a queue for a football match between Arsenal and Dynamo Moscow. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The Cold War in your living room. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The master of dressage

A photograph of photographer George Lowe and Cho Oyu mountain

In picturesThe conquest of Everest

Moscow 1980: going to the games

Scenes of frivolity in the 16th century. (Culture Club/Getty Images)

Bad sports? Puritan attempts to ban games in 17th-century England

English medical student Roger Bannister

A history of British sport

American golfer Bobby Jones practising his swing on the roof of the Savoy Hotel in London. (Photo by Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)

My history hero: Robert Tyre Jones (1902–71)

Pieces from the Lewis Chessmen, some of the earliest chessmen to survive.

In pictures: what are the Lewis Chessmen?

Ye olde travel guide: Olympia 480 Bc. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

England and Wales: best of enemies?

Communist sport: Cold War copycats

BBC History Magazine

Historians are wrong to kick football into touch

Sunbathers enjoy some fun and games at a tennis court near a lido at Castle Mill, Cheshire, August 1936

The 1930s: When the future looked bright. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Detail from the Devonshire Hunting Tapestries, showing hawking. Made in Tournai in the 15th century. (Photo by CM Dixon/Print Collector/Getty Images)

The LibraryThe medieval huntress

The LibraryThomas Becket and 16th-century swimming. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.