Over the centuries play and sports have been considered sacred, valiant, and noble, often viewed as a key rite of passage, and yet at other times they've been pagan, profane and heathenish. For those women bold enough to play, they attracted a mix of moral, social, and gendered insults, for example Amazonian, or unseemly. Whilst Nelson Mandela believed 'sport has the power to change the world…..to unite people in a way that little else does', recent events, such as Russia being frozen out of international sport, and the politicisation of the 2026 World Cup, would suggest that Mandela's vision is today no more than a pipe-dream. This 10 x classroom-based seminar programme explores the ups and downs of play and sport in Cambridge, from its Anglo-Saxon origins, to local Fairs, the Reformation, through to the Industrial Revolution and the Victorians - and what the future might look like.