Eustace Miles

Eustace Miles was the greatest English real tennis (jeu de paume) and rackets from the start of the 20th century up to World War I. He dominated the English Amateur Real Tennis Championship, winning it nine times between 1899 and 1910. He was also runner-up in 1904 and 1908. In addition, Miles was, in 1900, the first non-American winner of the US Real Tennis Championship and he won the American rackets title the same year. He was the world amateur real tennis champion seven times between 1898 and 1905, was the world amateur rackets champion in 1902 and four times the world amateur doubles champion at rackets 1902-06. In 1908 he won the Jeu de Paume silver medal at the London Olympics when he lost the final to American Jay Gould II, who Miles coached during his time in the United States in 1900-02, where he was the Honorary Secretary of the Tuxedo Tennis and Racquet Club.

Miles was the son of London bookseller and later publisher and was educated at Eastbourne College, Marlborough College, and then King’s College, Cambridge from 1887 where he obtained a BA in 1890 and an MA in 1895. During his time at Cambridge he was a double Blue at Real Tennis, winning the doubles in 1890 and both singles and doubles in 1891. He became a member of the MCC and won their annual Gold Racquet (later the J. G. Gribble Cup) 15 times between 1897 and 1913. In 1901 he wrote the first ever book about the sport of squash which he simply called: The Game of Squash.

As well as a keen sportsman, Miles was a food fanatic and in addition to his own publishing company he established the Eustace Miles Health Courses and in 1906 opened the first Eustace Miles Restaurant. It was a vegetarian restaurant or, as he preferred to call it, ‘Food Reform’ restaurant. He was the author of Health and Fitness and many other food and sporting books and was a keen supporter of the suffragette movement in the early 1900s.