Blood Sport: Hunting in Britain since 1066. Emma Griffin. Yale University Press

Contemporary Review, Summer, 2008

Blood Sport: Hunting in Britain since 1066. Emma Griffin. Yale University Press. [pounds sterling]19.99. xii 283 pages. ISBN 978-0-300-11628-1. As Emma Griffin writes, 'the history of hunting is not a story of decline but of innovation'. Without this innovation it would not have survived the change from an agricultural, rural society to an urban one.

By hunting we are really talking about mounted hunts, not the odd chap out killing rabbits. Within the history of hunting there have been profound changes, the most obvious of which was the replacement of deer by the lowly fox. Hunting is 'chasing wild animals for the purpose of profit or sport'. Because horses were always expensive and because land was essential, it was always associated with the landed classes and wealthy--although today many huntsmen are neither. This history shows the rise and fall and rising again of the sport and the many ways it manifested itself before its abolition by Parliament against public opinion. This history of survival gives hope that the sport will survive the latest onslaught of a Parliament with no real powers pursuing chimeras that please left-wing members of the Labour party. Sometime the author's grasp of events outside her field leave one wondering: what, for example, are 'members of the British monarchy'? (G.F.B.)