Chess: An Historical Perspective Chess - the "Royal Game" - is an ancient board game, perhaps fifteen hundred years old. There are many legends about how chess came to be. Most of them are folk tales and are far from reality. Arguably more books have been written about chess than all the other games combined, but relatively little has been written about the history of chess. The topic is difficult; it requires thorough knowledge, and there are still many unknown historical pitfalls. It is therefore no surprise that there exist a variety of hypotheses concerning the origin of chess. In this book, the author, legendary Russian grandmaster Yuri Averbakh, presents a well-researched and documented theory about the origins, development and spread of this immensely popular game. In addition, over three dozen splendid color plates - presented on coated stock making the images suitable for framing - supplement his historical analysis.

Inspired by both Daniel Defoe's 'A Journal of the Plague Year' (1722) and 'The King', an anthology of the witty and provocative chess columns of the Dutch Grandmaster, Jan Hein Donner, Ray Keene here collects his thoughts and writings on the year 2020 - both in chess and the wider world. His reflections include the impact of Covid-19 on the popularity of chess, the remarkable influence of the Netflix series 'The Queen's Gambit', the growing army of teenage Grandmasters, the online pivot of chess competition and the emergence of chess entrepreneurs, such as World Champion Magnus Carlsen and Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura.. Like Donner, Ray uses chess as a metaphor for observations on art, culture and civilisation.