Book reviews

Meticulously researched and accessibly and engagingly written, this is a highly valuable contribution to the history of women’s sport

February 12, 2026

Katie Taylor
Nottingham Trent University

*Peter Radford*
**They Run with Surprising Swiftness: The Women Athletes of Early Modern Britain**
296 pages, paperback, ill
Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press 2023 (Peculiar Bodies: Stories and Histories)
ISBN 978-0-8139-4793-8

As women gain more opportunities in sport, including higher levels of media coverage and greater opportunities for professionalism, the barriers they have faced have also come to the fore. As Peter Radford states in his Introduction, the general public is increasingly aware of issues such as the Football Association’s restrictions on women’s football and of some of the early historic achievements of sportswomen. What Radford aims to do in They Run with Surprising Swiftnessis shed light on a still hidden era of women’s sporting opportunities – the early modern period.

Radford has a clear reason for his interest in athletes and athletics. As a record-breaking sprinter, he competed for Great Britain in the 1960 Summer Olympics, winning two bronze medals. He also served as Vice-Chairman, Chairman, and Executive Chairman of the British Athletics Federation (now UK Athletics) between 1992 and 1997. As a notable athletics historian, Radford has written a biography of the 19th-century long-distance athlete, Captain Barclay. He is Honorary President of the National Union of Track Statisticians and previously published a 32-page booklet, 1866 and All That…: The Story of the World’s First National Athletics Championships for the event’s 150^th anniversary. He has worked on the sporting achievements of early modern women for many years and was awarded two Fellowships at the Folger Institute for his work on early modern women athletes.

Radford notes that the public displays of smocks were a “celebration of women’s power”, and in many ways this is true of the book. It celebrates women’s athletic achievements, their ability to beat men, and reveals another previously hidden history.

At the outset, Radford uses the Introduction to set up the issues that have faced sportswomen throughout the years and mentions some of the pioneering women who demonstrate what women were capable of. However, as he explains, histories remain underexplored, and some women’s achievements are unheard of, which neatly sets up the rest of the book.

The first two chapters contextualise the chapters that follow. Chapter one brings readers up to the start of the early modern period and explores the long history of women runners, including how women began running at Olympia before men. Starting in Ancient Greece, Radford traces these sporting women through the fall of the Roman Empire and medieval Europe, and into the 16th and 17th centuries. Chapter two considers the evidence needed to construct the history that the book lays out. As Radford notes, “there is no single, reliable source about women runners in Britain” (p. 24) in this period. The need for sources to come from newspapers, diaries, novels, court proceedings, works of art, poems, posters, and other sources not only reveals the difficulties that many historians of women’s sport face in constructing histories but also the almost forensic examination of sources that Radford’s book demonstrates. It demonstrates the dedication required to uncover these hidden histories.

Chapters 3 to 10 take a chronological approach to women runners in the early modern period. Beginning in 1638, most chapters span 25 years and examine the changing social and political landscape of the time to explain women’s participation. As such, it charts changing levels of acceptance of women’s sport, demonstrating how it was acceptable for women to be strong, but also when newspaper reports’ emphases changed to highlight participants’ attractiveness – a trope familiar to modern readers. Chapter 11 takes a thematic approach to the previous chapters. It provides an overview of the issues that remained stable over time (e.g., the carnivalesque nature of the events) and those that changed (including changing competition types). Radford also notes the issues that many historians of women’s sport face: relying on men’s accounts, bias, and a lack of knowledge about what women thought about these events.

Engraving after John Collett’s 1770 depiction of a young woman running barefoot in a “best-of-three” competition, often titled in reference to a “Holland smock” (a traditional prize of a chemise or dress). (Source: The British Museum website)

The final chapters focus on other sports and activities that women participated in during these years. Chapter 12 echoes Chapter 2 by providing the evidence on which the following chapters on the different sports are based. Chapter 13 focuses on tennis players, Chapter 14 on “team players,” and then Chapters 15, 16, and 17 on cricketers, fighters, and equestrians, respectively. What is often emphasised is that it was acceptable for women to be better than men at some of these activities. Some women cricketers were praised for outperforming men, while in tennis, an 18th-century Battle of the Sexes took place where a woman beat the best male player of the time. Chapter 18 serves as a conclusion, summarising the book’s key themes.

Throughout the book, the meticulous level of research really stands out. There are an extraordinary number of references, from diverse sources, that add to the richness of the book. This attention to detail and the use of various sources allow Radford to trace the careers of some athletes rather than a book full of one-off events. His use of images not only provides important information about the events he writes about, but also reminds us of the importance of using different types of images. While he reminds readers that “images can be misleading” (p. 32), Radford navigates these issues well.

They Run with Surprising Swiftness makes a highly valuable contribution to the field. While the early history of women athletes from Ancient Greece through to the present has been covered in books such as Women’s Sports: A History, Guttmann’s seminal text only dedicates approximately 50 pages to the early modern period. Williams’ A Contemporary History of Women’s Sport only begins in 1850. Munkwitz’s work on women riding horses covers the early eighteenth century, as does Nicholson’s Ladies and Lords: A History of Women’s Cricket; however, these sports are additions to Radford’s primary focus: women who ran.

Like many histories, it tells us a lot about society in general and, as such, makes the book relevant to those interested in sport and society in the early modern period. It is written in an accessible and engaging way that will make the book both interesting and helpful to academics (of all levels) and the general public.

Radford notes that the public displays of smocks were a “celebration of women’s power” (p. 152), and in many ways, this is true of the book. It celebrates women’s athletic achievements, their ability to beat men, and reveals another previously hidden history.

Copyright @ Katie Taylor 2026