David Goldblatt teaches at Pitzer College in Los Angeles. His books include The Ball Is Round: A Global History of Football.
Olympism, the strange syncretic invention of Pierre de Coubertin, drew on the baron’s misreading of the ancient games and a wilfully romantic appropriation of the English public school cult of the amateur athlete. Coubertin first called for a revival of the Olympics at a symposium at the Sorbonne in 1892, and in 1894 established the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which chose...
Visitors to the Qatar World Cup, stuck for something to do between games, should consider a visit to the museum of slavery at Bin Jelmood House in Doha, where they will see a large aerial photograph of the capital taken in the late 1940s. Were it not for the crescent-shaped shoreline, the city would be unrecognisable. Then it was a run-down port of around fifteen thousand people, home to...
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