MINOR PIECES tells the story of forgotten English chess players. Devised and written by Richard James, the first 86 articles were first published on John Upham’s website British Chess News: my thanks to John for his support and encouragement.
Combining the disciplines of chess history, social history and family history, I tell the stories of those players who would otherwise be forgotten. What were their lives like? Their jobs? Their families? Why and how did they play chess? Where and when did they learn?
You might think of grandmasters as the kings and queens of chess, masters as the rooks and social players as the pawns.
The Minor Pieces, the bishops and knights, are, for the most part, the ordinary club players without whom the grandmasters wouldn’t exist.
Here, you’ll meet a wide range of chess enthusiasts. Some were players of master standard who were also involved in club chess and have been neglected by most historians. Some will be club players and organisers who, while never scaling the heights, devoted their lives to playing and promoting their favourite game. Others, again, will only have played for a short time or at a low level, but had interesting lives outside chess. In the days when composed problems were a regular feature of newspaper chess columns, some were also problemists.
The articles will be illustrated, where appropriate, with games played by or otherwise connected with the subjects and, in the case of problemists, with some of their compositions. You’ll find a lot of good chess here – and quite a bit of bad chess as well!
(Technical note: you no longer have the option to play through games on this site: I might re-introduce it later, but it will require upgrading the site at a significant cost. I’ve also removed the Stockfish annotations.)
Our stories take place mostly from the start of competitive club chess as we know it in the 1880s up to the outbreak of the Second World War, but some will take you further, into the 1960s when I started playing, and beyond. A few articles will take you back to the earlier days of chess clubs and competitions, in the middle of the 19th century.
Many of the articles are concerned with my part of the world, the affluent outer London suburbs of Richmond and Twickenham, introducing you to past members of clubs serving those areas. By way of contrast, there will also be visits to the more industrial city of Leicester, in the heart of the English midlands, my father’s home city, and also the city where I studied a very long time ago.
I’ll also be looking at chess for women (they were Ladies in those days), the development of children’s chess in the inter-war years, and how chess has been used to help those people with a variety of disabilities and disadvantages. There will also be stories which don’t fit neatly into any of those categories, but which piqued my interest.
I’m always open to suggestions for subjects for future Minor Pieces.
Minor Pieces 