The Olympic Games in the Long Eighteenth Century

‘Olimpick Games’ were held in the Cotswolds annually throughout the eighteenth century. They were never merely local festivities, and were well known by people who might not normally have paid attention to sport, partly because of their royal support and partly because they drew on a belief that sporting festivals were expressions of Englishness, as old as the nation itself and as important to it as was sport to the ancient Greeks. Other events were also given the name ‘Olympic’, which became the way to describe many well‐organised sporting events in England, and this had an influence on the modern Olympic movement.