You may have heard stories of how the English won the battle in Agincourt thanks to the English and Welsh archers using the dreaded longbow. The longbow is such a part of English identity that even Shakespeare wrote about it:

Fight, gentlemen of England! fight, bold yeomen!
Draw, archers, draw your arrows to the head!
Spur your proud horses hard, and ride in blood;
Amaze the welkin with your broken staves!

Shakespeare

This is hardly surprising. For centuries, archery was a big thing in Britain. Villages used to hold regular, even weekly, contests. The humble darts, found in pubs all over the world, are said to be a remnant of that tradition.

You may also have heard how archers trained from toddlers. Indeed, one of the aphorisms concerning archery is that, to make a good archer, you have to start with his grandparents.

But was it really all that…