The Netflix mini-series, The English Game, captures the passion for association football [soccer] across the classes in late Victorian Britain and sympathetically sheds light on women’s lives. It does so at Alfred Lyttelton’s expense, however, who is over-simplified as the villain. Lyttelton was in fact a champion athlete (in football, cricket, and tennis), and he was also sympathetic to working-class concerns. This review considers Alfred Lyttelton’s real character, the significance of Edward Burne-Jones’s painting of The Golden Stairs to Laura Lyttelton, and the political lives of amateur footballers. Alfred and Laura Lyttelton, and Arthur and Alma Kinnaird were all born into prominent Liberal families - a term that this blog defines in the context of nineteenth-century British philanthropy.
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