Nearly one hundred years ago athletes Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddell took the Olympic Games and the world by storm, their heroics on the track immortalised in the 1981 film Chariots of Fire. But how were Abrahams’s and Liddell’s record-breaking feats reported on in the newspapers of the time? Were they celebrated in, say, the same way we celebrate our sporting heroes of today? In this special blog, we will explore the headlines behind the real Chariots of Fire, and in the …
athletics
As we continue to celebrate Black History Month at The Archive, in this special blog we will take a look at six pioneering Black British sporting heroes and their amazing stories. Using pages taken from the British Newspaper Archive, we will take the opportunity to tell the inspiring stories of these Black British sportsmen, whilst attempting to understand the prejudice they faced and overcame in pursuing their different sports. From left to right: J.E. London, Arthur Wharton, Len Johnson and …