The Commonwealth Games - The First 60 Years 1930-1990

by Cleve Dheensaw 

The Commonwealth Games - The First 60 Years 1930-1990 was released for publication in time for the 1994 Commonwealth Games in Victoria. The writer, Cleve Dheensaw, is a writer for the local paper, the Victoria Times Colonist.

The book is a good solid work, one of the first to cover the history of the Commonwealth Games that was not produced by an organizing committee. 

In straight chronological fashion, Dheensaw starts prior to 1930 with J. Astley Cooper's proposal in 1891 for 'Pan-Britannic" contests, and the 1911 festival of the Empire, before going into the events that occurred in each edition of the games since 1930. 

Covering one games per chapter Dheensaw covers the setting, such as the background and current climate of the Commonwealth at the time, and events themselves. Each chapter takes considerably more space to cover the events than the setting. Sidebar type articles give profiles of some of the star athletes at each games.

The tone and writing is similar in a way, but on a much smaller scale, to Wallechinskys' Complete Book of the Summer Olympic Games. 

Dheensaw includes medals tables for most of the games, but was not able to locate medals tables for the 1930 and 1934 games. In addition, where Wallechinsky gives full results in the finals of each Olympic event, the Dheensaw work just lists the winners in its results section.

This is a friendly book, written in a friendly way, about the "Friendly Games." You'll feel good reading some of the fascinating accounts of events, but Dheensaw does not shy away from some of the troubles of the games, most notably the issue of South African apartheid that plagued the games for so long. 

Dheensaw concludes, "The Commonwealth Games are a mirror through which a people express who they are and how they came to be. The vision reflected in that mirror - sometimes mighty, sometimes weak, but always compelling- is worth preserving."

It would be great to see an updated and expanded work on the Commonwealth Games prepared and ready for publication in time for the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games.

197 pages, paperback, Cleve Dheensaw, Orca Book publishers, Victoria, 1994

Review by Daniel Bell