Dating from the 1660s, this volume on sports and pastimes was left unfinished when the author died in 1672. The editors have been able to finish the book because of the unambiguous clues the author left behind. 'Any sensitive reader will come away from this book with greatly enhanced sympathy for the Puritan case against popular sports and games. Even the most hardened will be shocked by the violent sadism, wanton destructiveness and sheer imbecility evinced by some of the amusements described here.' TLS 'This is a fabulous book - by which I mean the subject of the fine editorial work of Cram, Forgeng and Johnston... The editors have done an excellent job with this book. The original text is rendered accessible to a wide audience for the first time. This in itself would have been enough for at least one market of readers, but there is so much more. Coming from a range of interests related to Willughby they have produced a multi-layered text with editorial material on the social scientific nature of the work, biographical information, contextualisation of work on games, all set in a finely wrought set of editorial conventions. I hope that this book get the wider readership it deserves; it is at once a work of deep scholarship and an entertaining and instructive read.' East Midland Historian