Women, Sport and Culture: From the 1948 London Olympic Games to Rome 1960

One of the many voices that debated Britain’s plans to host the fi rst Olympic Games after World War II belonged to Bevil Gordon D’Urban Rudd. Like many epigrams, the excerpt above reveals as much about the teller, as the tale of women’s sport. Rudd was a South African athlete of ‘Randlord’ heritage; an heir of gold and diamond dynasties who collectively controlled the most valuable mines in the world from the 1880s to the First World War. His father had been a director of De Beers.2 After excelling at St Andrew’s College, Grahamstown, Bevil Rudd became a Rhodes Scholar at Trinity College, Oxford before serving in the British army during World War I. He had therefore come from new money rather than an old family.