ABSTRACT
A closer look at the role of sport in evacuated areas suggests a more complicated and mixed picture, however. Newspapers in reception areas often focused on school sports events to highlight the cooperation between locals and evacuees and the integration of the latter into community life. The absence of direct comparisons with the pre-war period often makes it difficult to pinpoint the extent to which the war effected change in children’s sport. A number of women reflected upon the way in which their lifetime engagement with sport had been channelled through wider friendship and family networks. The weaving of sport into the everyday experience of school even in wartime is especially prominent in another source – the wartime letters of Geoffrey Iley. Mass-Observation’s interest in the relationship between feelings towards sport and wartime restrictions continued into the March 1942 directive sent to panelists.
