Book review: Darts in England, 1900-1939: a social history

Mike Huggins, University of Cumbria, reviews the book 'Darts in England, 1900–1939: A Social History' by Patrick Chaplin (Manchester University Press, 2009, ISBN 9780719078033).

In the last decade there has been growing academic interest in the part played by the public house in British society. Collins and Vamplew (2002), Gutzke (2006), Paul Jennings (2007) and Arthur Taylor (2009) have all explored various aspects of its past. So it is gratifying to see that that Manchester University Press, which has published some of the very best new work on British popular culture, including topics as diverse as the seaside holiday, the music hall, smoking and horseracing, has now provided another major and pioneering contribution to cultural history, bringing the history of the popular pub game of darts to a scholarly audience.

At its highest (commercial) level darts, formally recognised as a sport only in 2005, is currently doing well. Its Premier League events are growing in size, stature and importance. Well marketed, they have become a form of working-class theatre, with increased prize money, bright lights, girls, player–crowd interaction, glittering arena entries and lots of razzmatazz. Previously, darts was a very important twentieth century working-class pub-based social activity, although, as Chaplin is at pains to point out, it also became an acceptably respectable pastime for at least some of the middle and upper classes in the mid-1930s, even before George VI and his Queen played the game at a Slough Social Centre in 1937, supposedly making the women of Britain ‘darts-conscious’.