Authors
All our Played in Britain authors are knowledgeable and enthusiastic experts in their field. If you would like one of them to speak at your function, contact us and we will do our best to oblige.
Simon Inglis, series editor
Played in Britain series editor Simon Inglis is an author and architectural historian specialising in sport. Based in north west London, he has written a number of books on stadiums, sporting architecture and football history and gives regular lectures to a wide variety of organisations, clubs and educational institutions.
He is a passionate and entertaining speaker on Britain's sporting heritage, and in particular on the nation's historic sports architecture and landscapes.
Steve Beauchampé
Steve Beauchampe, co-author of Played in Birmingham, is a freelance writer, researcher and photographer on sport, music and architectural issues.
A supporter of Birmingham City and Warwickshire CCC, Steve was one of founders of the seminal football fanzine Off The Ball, and was a leading member of the Football Supporters Association from 1989-96.
He is an active member of the Friends of Moseley Road Baths and is currently writing a centenary history of the Grade II* building. He is also undertaking a photographic survey of Birmingham, West Bromwich and Solihull's entire stock of sports grounds and buildings as part of the creation of a wider archive of this aspect of the city's sporting heritage.
Dr Ian Gordon
Ian Gordon, co-author of Great Lengths, is a former competitive swimmer, water polo player and lifeguard and a GP in Bournemouth. He has served as team doctor to the Great Britain swimming team since 1993 and as Head of Medical Services for the Amateur Swimming Association since 2005. He is also a vice president of Worthing Swimming Club, which he joined as a nine year old in 1963, and a life member of the Bournemouth Dolphins SC. Great Lengths reflects more than 25 years of research into historic swimming pools, during which Ian has built up one of the most comprehensive archives in the country.
Hugh Hornby
Hugh Hornby studied Modern History at Oxford University and spent six years as curator of the National Football Museum in Preston. He is the author of Eyewitness Football (2000), and has also been a regular contributor to the Lancashire Evening Post and Lancashire Life. When not travelling around Britain to watch games of Uppies and Downies or his beloved Preston North End, Hugh is often to be found playing crown green bowls. He is currently working on a new title for Played in Britain, Bowled Over - the bowling greens of Britain.
Ged O'Brien
Ged O'Brien, the author of Played in Glasgow, qualified as a primary and secondary school teacher, working in Manchester, where he also acted as a consultant to the National Museum of Labour History and chaired the Greater Manchester branch of the Football Supporters Association. Thereafter he taught in both Nottingham and Southampton, before moving to Glasgow in 1993 to become project director of what was to be the world's first national football museum, opened at Hampden Park in 2001. He also served for five years as chair of the Association of Sports Historians. By this time, totally smitten with Glasgow, he returned to teaching in 2005.
Ray Physick
Ray Physick, author of Played in Liverpool, was born in Norris Green, raised in Kirkby, and is a former lecturer in history at Liverpool John Moores University. He graduated from the University of Northumbria in 1996 and is currently researching his PhD on the development of swimming in Liverpool from 1846-1914. His previous publications include papers on professional golf, 1945-75, and sport on Tyneside, plus entries in various encyclopaedias. He is also joint editor of a forthcoming book on Liverpool history and culture, to be published in late 2008.
Janet Smith
Janet Smith, the author of Liquid Assets, is a freelance journalist and a keen swimmer. Her first book was a history of Tooting Bec Lido, published in 1996 by the South London Swimming Club. Janet trained as a journalist with the BBC in 1984 and spent most of her career in Radio News and at Westminster. She is now a Blue Badge Guide for London and specialises in tours of Parliament and sporting venues.
Arthur Taylor
Arthur Taylor, the author of Played at the Pub, spent most of his working life as a producer/director at Granada TV, and much of his spare time going to the pub. Travelling the country, and also much of Europe, he developed a strong passion for games, culminating in the publication of the highly influential Guinness Book of Pub Games in 1992. He won a Budweiser Budvar Travel Bursary in 1998 for his Good Beer Guide to Northern France, and was Glenfiddich Drinks Writer of the Year in 2001 for a portfolio of articles in the CAMRA newspaper, What's Brewing. His other books include Brass Bands (Granada, 1979), Labour and Love - An Oral History of the Brass Band Movement (Elm Tree, 1983) and Spring on the Somme, A River Journey (Constable, 1995).