Young, aristocratic Ivor Montagu became an enthusiast for ping-pong and socialism.

Ivor Montagu was the man who changed ping-pong. More than 100 years ago, he took this quaint pastime of English aristocrats from stately homes to international stadiums. Soon enough, ping-pong would play a major role in international politics.

Montagu was born into the grandeur of one of England's richest families. As a boy, he would play in the garden of 10 Downing Street, the British prime minister’s residence. He remembered standing at his nursery window as he waited for the arrival of his mother’s good friend, the future Queen. 

Ivor Montagu was, then, a true English aristocrat – and, like other members of his class, he was expected to embrace sports. The boy’s father was an excellent shot and keen cricketer; his older brother Stewart was a brilliant rugby player. Montagu himself was not the sporting type. But there was one exception. Ivor loved ping-pong.

The key message here is: Young, aristocratic Ivor Montagu became an enthusiast for ping-pong and socialism. 

When Montagu was six, he persuaded his father to buy a table. From that moment on, he’d been playing with great enthusiasm. 

At the time, ping-pong was little more than a fad. The British, who’d spread soccer, rugby, and cricket across the world, saw it as just a type of after-dinner amusement. Other sports developed infrastructure that would support their growth. There were teams, stadiums, rulebooks. But ping-pong remained incoherent and rule-less. Even so, Ivor Montagu loved the game. 

And he had another passion – one he discovered on his walk to London’s elite Westminster School. One day, he noticed a pamphlet entitled “Socialism for Millionaires.” It was sitting in a window of London’s Fabian Society, and Montagu thought the brochure might have been written just for him.

Soon, the young aristocrat declared himself a socialist. He worked with the Labour party and even helped to store copies of one of Lenin’s books. His socialism was eventually discovered when the butler found a copy of a pro-Communist speech Ivor had drafted. The schoolboy’s aristocratic parents were appalled, relations in the family cooled, and Montagu was only too happy to escape to Cambridge University. 

The time he spent there only made his twin passions deeper.