Our latest supporter is Simon Inglis, the Played in Britain series editor, author and architectural historian specialising in sport. Over the years Simon has been a regular contributor to various BBC Radio programmes (including a brief stint as presenter of Radio Five's 6-0-6 phone in), and has written for The Observer, Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Financial Times, Radio Times, World Soccer, When Saturday Comes and numerous specialist and architectural journals. During the 1990s, as a board member of both the Football Stadia Advisory Design Council and the Football Licensing Authority, he played a lead role in the drawing up of design guidelines on modern stadiums, culminating in his editorship of the Guide to Safety at Sports Grounds (the so-called Green Guide) in 1996.
Simon has curated exhibitions on football and stadium architecture for the Building Centre (London) and the British Council (touring to China, Thailand, Egypt, South Africa and Qatar), and acted as a consultant to Sport England on the National Stadium project during the late 1990s.
His involvement with English Heritage began in 2001 as a consultant on their pilot study of sporting heritage in Manchester (for the 2002 Commonwealth Games), which led to work on the Played in Britain series commencing in 2003.
In addition to editing the series Simon is also a major contributor of photographs, taken during more than 25 years of fieldwork.
Inglis is the iconoclastic historian working wonders for the story of sport in this country under the innovative patronage of English Heritage. His pocket-sized collection of ancient sporting spheroids sounds risible, but is absolutely fascinating. Inglis is becoming a living national treasure and must be encouraged at all costs.
- Andrew Baker, Daily Telegraph
For more information - visit the website at www.playedinbritain.co.uk
