Can Britain come out to play?

Most summers when we were kids our parents took my sister and me on holiday to France. I remember being struck by the way young and old would gather in village squares of an evening to talk, drink and play boules. A thought lodged in my head: why didn’t we do that, too?

Britain lacks a culture of playing these sorts of public games. In Holland, strangers play chess in coffee houses. The same happens in public squares in the great American cities, while parks in Geneva are dotted with giant chess sets. Pétanque is part of the social fabric of France and Spain, while on any evening in Greece or Turkey men sit out on pavements, hunched over games of backgammon or dominoes. Not so in Britain.

Personally, I find the case of chess most galling. My dad taught me to play, and I came to love the game. But it wasn’t something anyone played at my school, and the idea of joining a club or league – bringing to mind images of awkward men scribbling down notation on obscure openings – never sounded much fun. So instead I scrounge the odd game here and there, occasionally persuading a friend to take out the pieces. Even then, if you pull out a chess board in a British pub, the other drinkers look at you askance, as if to say: “Oh, so you play chess?”

None of this is to imply that the British don’t love to play. Along with Germany we are probably the world’s most fanatical board-gaming nation. Sports clubs abound; parks are packed with team sports and joggers; poker is enjoying a resurgence; a certain vision of England is found wherever cricket is played on village greens. Even so, our social order is reflected in what we do in public spaces. Just as Britain’s recent riots expressed hidden ferment, so the easy-going culture of European public gaming is rather admirable, and reflects a society seemingly at ease with itself.

Our unpredictable climate, of course, makes sitting around in public for any reason less pleasurable. Anglo-Saxon countries also have a sharper distinction between the public and private in general, while Britain’s streets are lined with amusement arcades and bookmakers – perhaps elbowing other activities out of the way. But a more intriguing explanation comes from economist and historian Stefan Szymanski, who points to longer-standing divisions between British and European attitudes to recreation.

Historically, England’s peasants played folk games, while the ruling class enjoyed martial activities such as hunting, jousting and fencing. The latter were normally public spectacles too, coinciding with feasting and festivals. It was only in the 18th and 19th centuries, when the aristocracy first adopted the more traditional games as their own, that sport disentangled itself from the exercise of power. First cricket, then golf, then football were codified and formalised; all commoners’ games adopted by the elite. New semi-private sports such as badminton, croquet and lawn tennis came into being; older, more violent public pastimes, such as badger-baiting and cock-fighting, declined.

In continental Europe, however, Szymanski shows that another issue was at play: the worries of war. In 1806, Friedrich Ludwig Jahn saw Prussia’s army routed by Napoleon at the battle of Jena, and blamed the defeat on the poor physical state of the troops. Five years later, he opened his first Turnplatz, or gymnasium, in Berlin. The German gymnastic movement that followed was closely associated with the maintenance of a strong standing army, and so the health of the young. A similar movement took off in France.

In Britain – and eventually in America – games were promoted for the purposes of sociability, and organised in private clubs and leagues. On the continent, private associations were potentially seditious, and the state maintained a major role in the regulation and promotion of sport. In Europe, sport was in service of the republic; in Britain and the US it was independent of it.

At one level this seems to have little to do with current attitudes. France and Germany don’t mandate the playing of boules or backgammon today. Yet the Anglo-Saxon conception of private clubs, designed to welcome members and keep out the riff-raff, remains strong. In the space between games played in the privacy of one’s home, and in public in leagues and associations, it seems plausible that informal social gatherings, in squares or parks, were partially squeezed out.

Whatever the reason, it is a shame. London, in particular, used to be known throughout the world for its rich street and park life. Some small elements of the legacy plans for next year’s Olympics aim to recreate this, but much more could be done. Why not giant chess sets in every park, schools open in the evenings to allow people to play board games, or hundreds of outdoor table tennis tables? Or perhaps giant public gaming events, such as the Come Out & Play festival which every year turns New York into a giant playground, with thousands of people doing scavenger hunts or playing urban hide-and-seek. Such thing could persuade we Brits that it is OK to play in public. You never know: I might even get a few more games of chess out of it.

james.crabtree@ft.com

Simon Kuper is away