Essential Works, 2013

First trade edition, in smart blue and red cloth blocked in gilt.

This beautifully illustrated history of Eton College's Field Game tells the full story of the game from its beginning to the present, along the way explaining the development of the rules, the terminology and the characters who played the still popular sport. The Field Game is illustrated with over 500 wonderful pictures and anecdotes, plus hand drawn plates by the author showing the illustrated history of the Colours.

The Field Game is one of two codes of football devised and played at Eton College. The other is the Eton Wall Game. The game is like association football in some ways – the ball is round, but one size smaller than a standard football, and may not be handled – but the off-side rules – known as 'sneaking' – are more in keeping with rugby. There is also a small scrum or "Bully" of either six or seven a side. Goals can be scored much as in football, although there is no goalkeeper. But a team gains more points for scoring a 'rouge'. To score a rouge a player must kick the ball so that it deflects off one of the opposing players, or achieve a charge-down, and then goes beyond the opposition's end of the pitch. The ball is then 'rougeable' and must be touched – although not necessarily to the ground – by an attacking player to complete the rouge for five points. Rouges are similar to tries in that the scoring team then attempts to convert them for two points. 

It is the only game at Eton that virtually every boy plays, at least for his first three years in the school, and it occupies prime position in the games programme throughout the Lent Half.