Grandmaster of life, the universe and everything

Raymond Keene became the UK’s second-ever chess grandmaster in 1976, and then developed a notable career as a chess and mind-sports entrepreneur, historian, author and columnist. He wrote the chess columns for the Spectator (42 years), the Times (34 years) and Sunday Times (19 years), but all had been terminated by late 2019, when Keene was 71. A lesser man might have pulled in his horns, but he more than compensated with weekly essays, mainly on Saturdays for this platform, on chess, the universe and everything. These columns are nothing like the mostly technical analyses of chess games published by his former employers. His work for TheArticle and the British Chess Magazine ranges widely over the human landscape, weaving chess and chess players into a vivid tapestry of history, art, music and philosophy. In 50 Shades of Ray: Chess in the year of the Coronovirus Pandemic (Hardinge Simpole, £30), he has collected them into a book.

Chess is famously a game of war, incorporating tactics, strategy and psychology. Keene traces its history from Chaturanga, an ancient Indian war game of chance which collided with Pettaia, a Greek game of skill and logic introduced to India by Alexander the Great circa 330 BC. Swapping the roll of the dice for human brainpower transformed the game into a recognisable ancestor of chess, named by the Arabs Shatranj, popular with early Islamic rulers who successfully fought off the mullahs’ attempts to ban it. 

Shatranj in turn was supercharged by a number of key rule changes around 1475, all tending to greater power and mobility. The waddling Vizier, which had been restricted to moving one square at a time, became the Queen, the most powerful piece on the board, able to move any number of squares in any direction. The Rook (from the Persian Rukh, or chariot) was also freed to move any distance forward, backwards or sideways. And pawns were able to move two squares on their first go. Crucially, if a pawn reached the opponent’s back row, it could be transformed into a Queen or any other piece. 

Keene argues persuasively that these dynamic changes reflected developments in 15th-century warfare – after all, the Roman (or Byzantine) empire was finally extinguished in 1453 by the Ottomans’ devastating gunnery at the siege of Constantinople. More profoundly, the new rules chimed with the Renaissance and the growing appreciation of space, distance and perspective, as well as the discovery by Europeans of America and east Asia. The voyages of Columbus and Vasco da Gama projected the power of Spain and Portugal across the globe, and it was the Spanish in particular who then dominated chess and taught it to their subject peoples.

Most of the erudite and entertaining essays in 50 Shades of Ray are concerned with the development of the modern world of chess from the late 18th century onwards, when proper records began to be kept and the whole panoply of chess championships and grandmasters emerged. Each article illustrates, or is illustrated by, a particular game, and will be of great interest to players of all abilities. One would expect no less from the author. However, the real joy of this book is the way in which Ray Keene displays his understanding of history, art and human nature, his great cultivation, allied to an ever-present impish sense of humour.

He ponders whether Shakespeare played chess. Ferdinand and Miranda, the young lovers in The Tempest, are discovered playing the game. The conventional reading is that Miranda thinks Ferdinand is cheating, but doesn’t mind because she loves him so much.

Miranda: Sweet Lord, you play me false.

Ferdinand: No, my dear’st love, I would not for the world.

Miranda: Yes, for a score of kingdoms you should wrangle, And I would call it fair play.

Keene suggests that Ferdinand, having been educated at the centre of a Renaissance court, is playing by the new rules already referred to, in particular moving his Queen freely across the board. Miranda on the other hand has lived her entire conscious life on the enchanted isle and knows only the old rules of chess taught her by her father Prospero. Keene then brings in the example of powerful contemporary queens – Isabella of Castile, Catherine de Medici and our own Elizabeth I – before rounding off with the supposed portrait by Karel van Mander of Shakespeare playing chess with Ben Jonson. Convincing? Not entirely, but charming and thought-provoking, and cleverly linked to the first recorded modern game of chess played in Catalonia in 1493.

Marcel Duchamp was perhaps the most influential artist of the 20th century, but abandoned art for chess in 1923, when he was only 36. He was a very good chess player, though not quite of the top rank. He achieved Master status and played for France. He also wrote extensively about the game, especially for Le Soir newspaper. Keene argues that Duchamp abandoned the trappings – the physical products – of art because he wanted to create something purely cerebral, and chess afforded him this possibility. Although he never met Duchamp, he knew his widow Teeny, who afforded him unexpected insights into her husband’s mind. The avant-garde composer John Cage was a friend of Duchamp, and Keene argues that his most notorious composition, 4’33” (four minutes thirty-three seconds of total silence) represented the ultimate expression of mind over matter in a way that was totally in tune with Duchamp’s art and his dedication to chess. In the 1929 game that accompanies this meditation on Duchamp, the artist took a radical hypermodern approach, upending all expectations and forcing the resignation of his opponent, the Belgian champion Georges Koltanowski.

These Fifty Shades are anything but grey: they vividly reflect Ray Keene’s remarkably wide-ranging interests and long experience of chess, art and the world at large. They entertain and instruct in equal measure and will be appreciated by anyone with even a glancing knowledge of the great game.

“Fifty Shades of Ray: Chess in the year of the Coronavirus” is available from  Amazon , and  Blackwell’s .

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