"Chess: A History" —a Short Critique.

I previously offered a look at "History of Chess" by Jerzy Giżycki  (History and Old Lace), a remarkable book in many ways.  Now I'd like to explore "Chess: A History" by Harry Golombek.

Golombek is far better known than Giżycki, so his 1976 book had a little more "star-power," I suppose. But, while Giżycki's book is brimming with surprises, Golmbek's book is rather straight forward in its approach. 

image from the British Chess News

Harry Golombek —in case his 'star-power' has faded out— was one of the famous chess-playing codebreakers at Bletchley Park.  He was well-educated and, of course, brilliant (as his writings make obvious).  A three-time British champion and frequent member of his country's Olympiad team, he had firmly established chess credentials although his Grandmaster (1985) was an honorary one.  His whole life became devoted to chess, as a player, a journalist and an author of over 2 dozen books.

That Golombek was a trained philologist shows in his text to "Chess: A History" and in my opinion, supplies the edge to an otherwise mundane book.  It might be a little unfair to term his book mundane since it was written before the internet age and the things he presents may have been hard to access at the time.  But on the other hand, he dedicates his book to the memory of Harold James Ruthven Murray from whose "History of Chess" Golombek relies on heavily in his pre-20th century discussions and as he gets past the turn of the century, an era he lived through, the text becomes rather thin. 

I think this book shines in 2 areas:  literature and images of chess pieces.

That said, I did use an image from this book for an article I wrote years ago called "The Lion of Chess."

(click the image to got to the "The Lion of Chess")

Here is an example of one of the many chess sets displayed in the book:

The caption reads: "A chess set representing Teesside Industries presented to H. Golombek at the World Junior Championship Tournament at Teesside, in the north of England, in 1973. They were designed by Richard Leake."

This leads to something I found to be a turn-off. Golombek inserted himself (even a photo of himself) in the book a few times. Normally there'd be nothing wrong with that, but in dealing with the History of Chess, a super-broad topic, in only 258 pages, Golombek barely rates a footnote. 

Now, lets look at the strongest part of the book, the poetry and literary references.

Golombek provided maybe dozens of examples of chess in poetry and literature through the ages, many of which I'd never encountered elsewhere. Here are just a handful of them:

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"Where exactly, when exactly, how exactly and by whom exactly the game of chess was invented we do not know. Its very ancientness provides a full explanation for this ignorance. Indeed, any glib exact reference to its origin must be more than suspect. No reasonably plausible explanation as to its invention exists. All sorts of picturesque and poetic legends have been constructed to filI the gap. Consider, for instance, the reference to chess in Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy written in 1626:

'Chesse-play is a good and wittie exercise of the mind for some kinds of men, and fit for such melancholy persons as are idle and have impertinent thoughts, or troubled with cares; nothing better to distracte their minds and alter their meditations; invented (some say) by the general of an army in a famine to keepe his souldiers from mutiny.'"

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"The fact that Persia produced a great poetic literature means that in one way we are lucky, for there are frequent references to chess. But they can, alas, be misleading. The most famous and the one with which we all become acquainted in our schooldays is, of course, Edward FitzGerald's translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:

''Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days
Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays;
Hither and thither moves , and mates, and slays
And one by one back in the Closet lays.'"

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"Persian literature of Omar Khayyam's time continually used the game as an illustration and a parable of the happenings in real life. Thus Unsuri, a poet who was his contemporary, wishing to praise the success of his patron, Mahmud of Ghazm, in warfare and diplomacy, wrote of him:

'The monarch played chess with a thousand kings for the kingdom
And to each king he gave checkmate in a different way.'"

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"There is a pretty poem by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, tn Totiel's Miscellany (published in rSsT), which refers to a game of chess that must have been played under the new rules which gave such power to the Queen. Entitled To the lady that scorned her lover, it describes how he parries a check from the lady and sees how he himself can give check while at the same time attacking the Queen (Ferse). Since the unfortunate earl was executed in 1547, the poem makes it clear that England knew the new game at least as early as that. His is a parable in a rather different style from the moralities:

'Although l had a check
To give the mate is hard.
For I have found a neck
To kepe my men in gard.
And you that hardy are
To give so great assay
Unto a man of warre
To drive his men away,
I rede you, take good hede,
And marke this foolish verse:
For I will so provide
That I will have your ferse
And when your ferse is had,
And all youre warre is donne:
Then shall yourself be glad
To ende that you begon.
For yf by chance I winne
Your person in the feeld:
Too late then come you in
Your selfe to me to yeld.
For I will use my power
As captain full of might
And such I will devour,
As use to shew me spight.
And for because you gave
Me checke in such degree,
This vantage loe I have
Now checke and garde to the !
Defend it if you may:
Stand stifle, in thine estate,
For sure I will assay
If I can give the mate'"

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"...the following gentle extract [is] from a French romance, Eliduc, written about the year r3oo by Marie de France:

'The King, arising from high table
'Went to his daughter's chambers
To play at his beloved chess
With an invited foreign guest.
His daughter sitting next to him,
'Was eager to learn chess, t'would seem.
Eliduc came, the King stopped play.'"

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I'm not sure Golombek achieved the proper balance in this book. Being somewhat short considering the expansive topic, he covered many areas too shallowly for those with real interest in those areas but too academic (his prose is very formal and staid) for the casual reader.  Really, one book can't try to appeal to both audiences.

Below is the table of content. Published in 1976, it ends with a peek into the "post-Fischer Era." I suppose if it were updated, we'd find the "Kasparov Era" and the "Computer Era."  This shows Golombek's straight-forward, but unimaginative style.  

Thanks.

Wonderful! 

Nicely done :-)

You're on a roll this week, Sarah.  Thanks for another interesting post.

Golombek was well known for his capacity to talk about himself. I bought the book when it came out, and in the context of the time it was rather dry - his style - but better than much that was around.

Another one that I do not have. I do have Golombek's Encyclopedia of Chess, which is far less comprehensive and contains more errors than Hooper and Whyld, The Oxford Companion to Chess, 2nd edition. Both books sit on my shelf near Murray and the brief but quite good Eales, Chess: The History of a Game.

For the early period from the beginnings of modern chess to Greco, there is now Peter J. Monté, The Classical Era of Modern Chess (McFarland 2014), a work of terrific scholarship.

How do you assess the accuracy of Golombek's text?

I have a copy of that I picked up at a used bookstore a while back. Not terribly useful with internet resources and due to age but seemed interesting.

I recently bought Golombek's book about the 1959 Candidates' Tournament. My expectations were high, for such an exciting tournament.

I find Golombek's comments quite mediocre; bland and without style.

He makes a Picasso painting look like a grey wall.

It is hard to get me to be hard on almost any chess writer, but Keene and Golombek, well, I will make an exception for them.

Nice ! 👏 Upvoted ! 👍

Yes, sometimes one has to look at these things with some perspective, I think.

shh... your getting ahead of myself.

I think Golombek's text is fairly accurate. It's certainly not outlandish or anything.