ENGLISH SPORT. By Captain H.F.H. Hardy.

1932 1st edition. 8vo (145 x 214mm). Ppx,186. B/w illustrations by Anne Harris-St. John. Recent half-leather over marbled paper-covered boards, five raised bands, gilt decorations, gilt titles on contrasting leather spine-labels.

Captain Hardy reminisces at length on his very varied sporting activities, "...in shooting, in hunting a pack of hounds, in handling a team, or throwing a dry fly". The author's main concern is that, "in Sport the old order of thirty or fourty years ago has yielded to new at a pace which is almost staggering. Thirty years ago, the vast majority of men who took partin any kind of sport had been brought up to it from their earliest days ...living in a sporting atmosphere and having the rudiments of Sport thoroughly instilled into them". In this book, Hardy sets out to convey something of that society's outlook to the struggling late-comer to field sports, who he sees all about him. Surtees and earlier writers say much the same thing, so perhaps Hardy's view is at least in part a reflection ofhis own social trajectory through the years. Riding to hounds, hare hunting, stag hunting (carted and otherwise), flyfishing, coarse fishing, shooting, gundogs, field trials, polo, carriage driving, rough shooting, and much else besides.