The Evils of Chess! April 7, 2013
Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary, Medieval, Modern
Chess! The taut, horrid syllable is enough to unveil the rotteneness at the heart of that most dreadful of games. Avoid it! Turn from it! Ostracise those who play it! Ok, Beach is playing out here, but he recently came across this extraordinary quotation from an Anglican vicar from Essex, at the death of his […]
Was Chess Invented in Ireland or China or India or…? November 5, 2012
Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient, Medieval
There is a general consensus that chess came out of the east, that it arrived in Europe through the Arab Mediterranean and that from there it made its way to the royal courts of France and Germany. Certainly, by the fifteenth century a game that we recognise […]
Haunted Chessmen November 25, 2011
Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary, Medieval, Modern
Invisible writes in with the news that the Lewis Chessmen are about to go on exhibition in New York. And Beach took this as a prompt for one of his favourite archaeological stories. The unnamed Lewis farmer in the following account was one Malcolm ‘Sprot’ Macleod In 1831 a high tide on the coast […]
Did Hitler and Lenin Play Chess Together in 1909? July 5, 2010
Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary, Modern
Chess is sometimes called the ‘Game of Kings’. In modern times, at least, it would be truer though to call it the ‘Game of Dictators’. Such unsavoury individuals as Lenin, Napoleon, Fidel Castro, Colonel Gadaffi and the appalling Che Guevara – coming soon to a dress or a tee-shirt near you – all enjoyed the […]
