Chess in the Year of the King

 

Published by: Hardinge Simpole

2023 Hardcover

Pages: 417

ISBN: 978-1-84382-234-9 Hardback

ISBN: 978-1-84382-235-6 Paperback

 

The Publisher’s Notes.

Grandmaster Ray Keene OBE has enjoyed a career which spans many aspects of chess, including numerous victories in international competitions across five continents, organisation of three world chess championships involving Garry Kasparov, creation of the first ever world championship in any Mind Sport between a human and a computer (Dr Marion Tinsley v Chinook in draughts, London 1992) and the world record authorship of 206 books on Mind Sports, thinking and genius, with translations into sixteen different languages.

Here, Ray adapts forty-one of his columns originally written for The Article and The British Chess Magazine, together with some additional games and illustrations, in which his primary aim has been to connect chess to wider political, scientific and cultural concerns.

Contents

Brief Glossary of Abbreviations

Foreword

Introduction

Games

 

There are five sections to the book names as follows

Section One: Arts and Civilization

Section Two: Chess Legacy

Section Three: Russia and Ukraine

Section Four: World Champions

Section Five: Additional games

Further additional notes.

 

My overview

I read the predecessor to this – 50 Shades of Ray, an anthology covering the year of Coronavirus which was reviewed on this web site in August 2021. This second anthology is similar to that book in as much as it is a collection of games and notes (essays) as described in the Publisher’s comments above. It covers the time of the accession to the throne of King Charles III who happens to have been a landing mate of the authors from Trinity College Cambridge.

I have always enjoyed Keene’s style of writing. He is able to weave into his chess columns, an extraordinary number of historical and cultural references, which in my view serves to illuminate the game and enhance the pleasure of reading. No one else seems to write in this manner. The author is a prodigious writer, having published not only 206 chess books to date, but countless newspaper columns of which his regular features for ‘The Article’ are most entertaining. Just enjoy some of his articles here:

https://www.thearticle.com/contributor/raymond-keene

One look at the chapter headings illustrates how diverse the book is, and there really is something for everyone. There are absorbing details about the history of the game, and chess players these days would do well to read them, instead of studying openings all day. Who else could graft issues such as ‘The siege of Troy, the Natural History Museum in Brisbane, the Welsh Mabinogion and ‘Anonymous Bosch’ into their chess columns? There is poetry too, and plenty of nice supplementary illustrations to accompany the articles.

Keene is an expert at articulating contemporary and historical facts, combined with his own views and experiences such as why the police contacted him with a bizarre chess request. Where he gets his ideas from is anyone’s guess, and I freely I admit that this intellectual heavyweight loses me completely at times. You can expect lines such as ‘So, Godot, a symbol, God, a metaphysical construction, or a very bad French cyclist?

Crikey! Yet I love books that challenge me in some way and I ended up Googling a variety of topics, browsing eagerly through my Oxford dictionary, and studying giant lobsters, all because of this publication.

The games

Let us not forget that this is a book about chess. There are fifty-six annotated games, which include ancient and contemporary chess, the latter showing the ‘bongcloud’ attack’ with 1.e4 e5 2.Ke2? which Hikaru Nakamura played for fun occasionally. What kind of madness is this?

The author includes his own games (quite rightly), and those from Greco to LaBourdonnais and Fischer to Nepomniachtchi. There is even a game of Einstein’s to be studied. The ladies enjoy their moment in the spotlight too, with battles from Cathy Forbes (against Tal!) and Vera Menchik, former Women’s World Champion, who died in the Blitz in 1944 at the age of 42, destroyed as she was by a Nazi flying bomb.

Ray Keene has played many fine games in his career, and he was always determined to demonstrate that Black could play for a win, not just try to gain equality. His game against Eraso Gallego in Madrid (1982) shows his pugilistic spirit.

I enjoyed the chapter ‘In Memoriam’ a tribute to Michael Basman who sadly died in 2022.

This was the game Basman-Hartston from 1968 (Birmingham-London) with White to play. Basman essayed 38.Ne6!! which demolished Black’s resistance. I will let you find the game and the finish.

There are so many entertaining chapters but I particularly enjoyed ‘Chess: Feasting with Grandmasters’ as Keene transports us back to a time when chess was all the rage at Simpson’s-in-the-Strand in London being the world’s greatest chess club, serving delicious roast beef, followed by coffee and cigars. The other elite club in the world at that time was the Café de la Régence in Paris. By some strange quirk of fate, I was due to visit the French capital at the time of reading this book – so I paid a visit to the café, which is not in its original location, nor does it have anything to do with chess any longer, but the book inspired me to stop by and I kept one of the coffee coasters (shown below) as a memento.

Back to my favourite chapter and Keene translates the French menu from the London 1883 tournament, which includes lobster cutlet with rich sauce, noisettes of mutton in huntsman’s style, and stuffed peaches with macaroons. This is food fit for a king for sure.

There are revelations contained within the pages too. Who knew that Britain’s second over-the-board grandmaster (the author) had an early interest in marine biology? Keene soon learned that lobsters were not only fascinating to study but also delicious to eat, grilled in a hot butter sauce. I was enthralled by the story of bogavante gigante - an immense, blue lobster not even listed on the menu. Did the author ever eat one of these brobdingnagian crustaceans? Read the book and find out.

If you want a book replete with interesting and instructive chess games, that also includes subjects such as the Jacobean cancel culture, the great chess murder challenge, Cheating at chess, and Norse code – then this is for you. I can imagine entertaining visitors by reading selected prose from the book.

Oh, and how lovely of this British chess legend to include a piece on the young Shreyas Royal – now a UK citizen, who notched up his first grandmaster result and will go on to greater things. This is what I like about Keene – he will happily share stories from days gone by, but he is also bang up to date with current chess affairs. He describes himself often as emanating from the cretaceous period. Maybe, but he has been blessed with a razor-sharp brain, and a formidable intellect. People like Ray Keene deserve to be listened to, whether or not his opinions in his articles are agreeable or otherwise. Some may say that this is merely a collection of random musings, but if so, then it is for that very reason that I like it. You never know what you will find when you turn the pages.

I found only a couple of minor typos, and I would have preferred the list of players and games at the back of the book, not the front, but these are minor quibbles. I personally would like to see the diagrams with the alpha-numeric co-ordinates on, which might help average strength players and beginners. The book is what it says it is, a collection of chess essays (chessays) over a period of time. There’s nothing quite like it out there, and I am delighted to have it on my bookshelf. I will conclude this review with my favourite words from the book.

‘Chess is an arena for human endeavour.’

Quite so.

International Grandmaster Raymond Keene OBE became a grandmaster in 1976. His victory over Mikhail Botvinnik at Hastings in 1966/7 was only the third ever victory by an Englishman over the Soviet world chess champion. Ray retired from competitive chess in 1985, after appearing for England in eight consecutive Chess Olympiads. He is a prolific author and chess columnist and has organised many top-level chess evets including the World Chess Championship in London in 1993 between Garry Kasparov and Nigel Short.

 Adam Papier Black ‘massaged’ and oversaw the book as co-author. Originally enlisted as the editor, he contributed so much that Ray Keene invited his promotion as co-author. Adam has great experience of playing, organising and writing about chess.