Baron Pierre de Coubertin. Well, we all know about him, don't we? He was the Frenchman who invented the Olympic Games, which are not about winning, but taking part.

It's broadly true. But, as with so many other broadly held beliefs, it's not exactly true.

Let's take the bit about not winning but taking part first. As Janie Hampton's recently published London Olympics 1908 and 1948 (Shire Publications, £6.99) makes clear, the words which formed the Olympic motto - displayed on the scoreboard of the old Wembley stadium during the latter Games - were not de Coubertin's own, although he was the one who brought them into the Olympic arena.

This happened on the day of the event which, above all others, characterises the 1908 London Olympics – the marathon race in which the collapsing figure of Dorando Pietri (pictured) was helped to complete his final, agonising 300 yards and thus to finish ahead of the American who, quite rightly, took the gold medal after completing the course unaided, Johnny Hayes.

Hampton reports that Hayes, whose victory was only confirmed after a protest from his team officials, was subsequently carried round the stadium on a table by a group of his fellow US competitors – indeed this forms one of the many fascinating pictures included in the Hampton book. She also reports that this unofficial parade was ignored by the crowd, "who felt Pietri was the true winner, having so valiantly tried to win".

After the delirious Pietri had been taken to hospital, false rumours circulated that he had died, prompting yet more ill feeling. "Anglo-American relations reached their lowest point for over 100 years," Hampton writes.

The marathon incident was but one of several involving the sensibilities of the hosts and the American team which was to win more than half of the track and field events.

There had already been controversy over the fact that the US team had been the only ones in the Opening Ceremony not to dip their flag to King Edward VII, and further Anglo-American friction had occurred in a 400 metres race run without lanes, where US athlete John Carpenter caused boos to ring out around White City as he appeared to move out across the track to prevent Britain's Wyndham Halswelle from overtaking him and assuming the lead.

Carpenter, disqualified for blocking and elbowing, boycotted the re-run, along with his two American colleagues, and the unhappy Halswelle claimed gold by running round the track as fast as he could, all by himself.

The onlooking de Coubertin, who had promoted the Olympics as a means of uniting nations, was reported to have remarked: "I just could not understand Sullivan's attitude here; he shared his team's frenzy and did nothing to calm them down."

So it was in this unhelpful atmosphere that de Coubertin reminded his friends on the evening of the marathon of the words which had been spoken a few days before by the Bishop of Pennysylvania in a sermon at St Paul's Cathedral during the ceremony in honour of competing athletes: "The important thing in Olympics is not so much winning as taking part. The essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting well."

Fine words – not de Coubertin's, but brilliantly appropriated and utilised by him.

This was something at which the visionary Frenchman, as Catherine Beale's recently published Born Out of Wenlock - William Penny Brookes and the British origins of the modern Olympics (Derby Books Publishing) makes clear.

Beale's painstakingly detailed history of the annual Games which were established by Brookes in the Shropshire town of Much Wenlock in 1850, and which have continued, with sporadic gaps, until the present day, offers every twist and turn in the life of an Englishman whose vision was at least the equal of the man generally credited with prompting the modern Olympics.

She fills her boots on the visit which de Coubertin, then 27, paid to the 81-year-old Brookes and his fellow Gamesmen in October 1890.

Ever the showman, Brookes contrived an autumnal version of the Games which normally occurred in July, and on the day of de Coubertin's visit there were seven events, all of which took place in steady rain.

Beale has all the detail. Thus we learn that part of the spectacle which took place in front of the damp Frenchman was the tent-pegging event in which Corporal Dickin was judged by Sgt-Major Bosher to have beaten Corporal Convey.

There are times when Beale's devotion to detail feels a little like that of a proud parent, but there is no denying the depth of research in what broadens out into a social sporting history of the late 19th century, with its abiding belief in the concept of muscular Christianity.

Thus we learn how personable and pleasant the young Frenchman was on the day as his elderly host, who had striven for so many years to broaden his idea into an international context, proudly showed him every aspect of his own "Olympian Games".

"In Coubertin," Beale writes, "had he found a man to take forward, in parallel, his Olympian dream?"

Well yes he had. But as Beale wryly notes, there was not too much made of the fact that it was an Olympian dream belonging to anyone other than Baron Pierre de Coubertin (pictured, sitting left, with members of the first International Olympic Committee).

Beale notes that, up until his visit to Britain, de Coubertin "had never publicly uttered the words 'Olympic Games' except in derision"; but less than two years later "he had decided to revive international Olympic Games, and within four years he had founded the International Olympic Committee."

While de Coubertin did credit Brookes for his work when he wrote of his visit to Much Wenlock in 1890, as Beale points out, his description has been popularly misunderstood for a number of years. While it credited Brookes with the resuscitation of the Olympic Games, the translation missed the significance of the French word 'y' – meaning 'there'. In other words, de Coubertin was only crediting Brookes with setting up an Olympic style event in Shropshire.

Beale goes on to write of the way in which de Coubertin (whose statue is pictured at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta) appeared not to be keeping Brookes au fait with his developing Olympic project.

"Why did Coubertin not share his great dream with Brookes, if only to make the old man happy, or at least out of courtesy?" she writes. "And if Coubertin was experiencing such a dark night of loneliness in conjuring up support for his idea, it is curious to wonder why he did not recruit Brookes to the cause .......

"Perhaps Coubertin was fearful of losing control (and credit for the idea) to the elder statesman?"

Once it became clear that the modern Olympics were to become a reality in Athens, however, Beale notes the Brookes was anything but grudging.

"Ever practical," she writes, "he advised Coubertin to get wealthy Greeks in England to contribute to the costs of the Games."

Sadly, Brookes died, aged 86, just 17 weeks before the 1896 Olympics got underway.

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, has covered the last five Summer and four Winter Olympics for The Independent. Previously he has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, the Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. He is now chief feature writer for insidethegames. Rowbottom's Twitter feed can be accessed here