The Lore of the Playground: The Children's World - Then and Now

by Steve Roud

From conkers to marbles, from British Bulldog to tag, not forgetting "one potato, two potato" and "eeny, meeny, miny, mo," The Lore of the Playground looks at the games children have enjoyed, the rhymes they have chanted, and the rituals and traditions they have observed over the past hundred years and more. Each generation  has had its own favorites. Some pastimes, such as skipping, have proved remarkably resilient, their complicated rules carefully handed down from one class to the next. Many are now the stuff of distant memory, and some traditions have proved to be strongly regional, loved by children in one part of the country, unknown to those elsewhere. All are brilliantly and meticulously recorded by Steve Roud, who has drawn on interviews with hundreds of people aged from 8 to 80 to create a fascinating picture of all our childhoods.

Genres: History

560 pages, Paperback

First published October 31, 2010

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating meander through the history of childrens playground games. Lots of memories of games played in the pastsome that I thought were unique to my school weren't

[Amy Turner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun to page through. I was amazed at how similar British and American childhood games are