Chess

The game of chess, originally invented in Persia, entered the south of Britain with the Normans post-1066 and the north with the Vikings. The Church at one stage forbade their clergymen from playing it, but the nobility loved it, since it appealed to a natural interest in tactics and strategy.

The UK’s oldest chess pieces date from the 1100s and were found in Uig Bay in the Outer Hebrides in 1831. Twenty years later, London’s Great Exhibition would trigger the world’s first international chess competition, organised by one of Britain’s greatest players, Londoner Howard Staunton (1810-74).

Staunton had been at the top of the game since 1843 and he was the first to have a chess column in a newspaper. He also wrote ‘Chess-Players’ Handbook’ (1847) and, with the board-game maker Jacques of London in 1849, devised the standard chess set still in use today.

The British Chess Foundation was established in 1904. This followed a century in which London’s coffee houses had been the hub of chess for all-comers, including the best players in Europe. Britain has had approximately 42 Chess Grandmasters since 1950. Lancashire-born Nigel Short (1965-), who qualified as a Grandmaster at the age of 19, is the only Briton to have reached a World Championship Final.

(Images LtoR: Howard Staunton at picryl.com, chess move at pixabay.com / both Public domain)