Over the course of the academic year we watched three episodes of "Games Britannia", a documentary dedicated to looking at the history of games in the British isles. Part 1, "Dicing with Destiny" showed us the earliest games to be found in England: I will cover briefly here what was covered in the episode.
The Stanway Game was discovered at a burial site beneath a body and is believed to be one of the earliest examples of a game in British history hailing from the time of the Roman occupation of Britain historians have dated the game at a staggering 45AD.
Alea Evangelii seemed to be an English version of Tafl, a game I mentioned in my Ancient Games blog post, as with a lot of the games of this time it is heavy in spirituality and religion. The game came from medieval Britain and is also known as "Game of the Gospels".
Backgammon, Dice and Chess all owe their British introduction to the book "Libro de los Juegos" which literally translates as "The Book of Games".
The final game was "9 Men's Morris", the game that seems to pop up all over the world. According to Irving Finkel this is because the game seems to be the obvious way to go when one wants to make a game from nothing.
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