Robert Holland

Email

holland@smilebroadband.co.uk

Phone

0121 429 1831 or 07930 854325

Fees

£50. Travel expenses by arrangement dependent upon time and location

Equipment required

A couple of tables and a chair

Size of audience

Any

Availability

Day or evening

Subjects covered

Early lawn tennis, with particular reference to:

• Harry Gem and Augurio Perera, Birmingham’s Victorian lawn tennis pioneers
• the game they devised at Perera’s Edgbaston home in the late 1850s
• their later club in Leamington Spa - which was the first lawn tennis club in the world.

The talk will also include reference to:

• Edgbaston Archery & Lawn Tennis Society, the oldest surviving lawn tennis club in the world
• the first lawn tennis Olympic gold medals won at Athens 1896 by J.P. Boland, who had been a pupil at Newman’s Oratory School in Edgbaston.

Additional information

Robert is a former Honorary Secretary and Chairman, now a trustee of Edgbaston Archery and Lawn Tennis Society and a council member of the Warwickshire LTA. He is also the founding trustee of the Harry Gem Project which among other activities raised the funds and commissioned the restoration of Harry Gem’s grave in Warstone Lane Cemetery in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter.

Page last updated

23 November 2023