ABSTRACT
In my relationship with Professor Mangan over the last few years, two themes cropped up consistently, which he expressed to me in a variety of different ways and which have stuck in my mind. They might be said to encapsulate and define my research and my writing activities. The gist of the two themes could be briefly summarized as follows. Firstly, ‘Don’t think of yourself as a sport historian, think of yourself as a social and cultural historian with a special interest in the history of sport’. Secondly, ‘You need to be less of a bike freak, and more of a cultural historian’. These two reminders are, in a sense, simple, and yet they are also useful, productive and profound to someone in my situation, coming to the history of sport with an already well-developed historical knowledge of one particular sport – cycling – and with a need to put the history of that sport in the context of wider social, cultural and economic history. In helping me to tackle my doctoral dissertation, and currently the publication of a major study of early cycling sport, this advice of Professor Mangan’s has been invaluable and constantly leads me to try to make new connections, and to interpret the overwhelming amount of source material within a wider and broader approach. I very much appreciate his strong, consistent and continual academic support.
