Sport has been important in my life, but I never thought I would write a book about it. Sport and writing were separate spheres of activity, the one in contrast to the other. But when I was asked to contribute to The Art of Living series, sport was the topic that most took my fancy: now I could bring the two spheres together. This required a new kind of writing from me: more about bodies than minds.

The book takes the form of a memoir, from childhood to the present (in this it resembles my intellectual memoir The Making of a Philosopher). This struck me as the best way to present sport as it is experienced from the inside, as a participant. It also enables me to bring out the concrete aspects of particular sports, their structure and demands. I am not dealing with sport as a detached sociologist or “cultural theorist”, but as a philosophically minded practitioner. Accordingly, there is little here about the social and economic aspects of professional sports; my focus is on sport as part of the good life of an individual – as something anybody can engage in. I am interested in the value of sport as a human activity. And I am advocating it as an essential part of living well.

I have lived in America for the past twenty years, and much of my narrative relates to this phase of my life. However, I have also included my earlier British sporting years as well. The result is distinctly transatlantic, and I have been aware that my readers are likely to be from one place or the other, with different sporting cultures.