History

Our History Posts and Series
(listed in roughly alphabetical order) 

Asylum Index
Please see the separate index to 13 posts relating to chessers in Bethlem/Broadmoor Asylum from Victorian times onwards - especially Richard Dadd.

Brasen Nose Chess Club 1810-11
Revelations by Richard Tillett about a short lived chess club in Oxford - one of the first.
1. Those delightful symposiasts
2. Gentlemen only
3. Every man has his piece
4. Oysters at nine
5. The last hurrah
6. The beginnings of organised chess

Brixton Byways
Round the back passages of chess in our locality with Martin Smith (See also Streatham Strolls, below)
1. Earnest Endeavours
2. Peyers You Go
3. Onwards And Upwards 
4. Regular Bricks
5. Sargent Majors
6. Men Of Might
7. Streatham News!
8. Uncommon People
9. Fast Forward and Backtrack
10. Howzat
11. War Game 7 etc.

Les Chesseurs Britanniques de Paris
A short series (by Martin Smith) on the British Chess Club of Paris 1926-c.1938
Part 1 The Club
Part 2 The Opposition
Part 3 The Match
Part 4 The Beast
Part 5 The Robot
Part 6 The Addendum

County Counting
A series, by Martin Smith, mining the archive of the two volumes of the Surrey County Chess Association Match Books 1884 to 1967.
1. Preface
2. More Isidor
3. Striking Matches
4. Well, Well, Well
5. In the Jellie Mould
6. Local Derbys
7. Local Derbys - They Also Ran
8. Service, Please
9. War Game 7 etc

Every Picture Tells A Story Index

Please see the separate index to 23 posts on the ground-breaking trail beaten (by Richard Tillett and Martin Smith) investigating Thomas Leeming's painting of the Gentlemen of the Hereford Chess Club of 1815.

Knightmare! Scenarios
A series revealing all about the three issues of Knightmare! S&BCC's shortlived chess mag in 1977-9.
1. Chess in a Time of Letraset
2. Alice in Blunderland
3. Village Folk
4. Just Rooks, Pawns and Kings
5. Pelikan Crossing
6. The End is High

Miscellaneous
History Boy
History Boy 2
Morphyc Resonance
History Boy 3

Mr Rosenbaum's Chess Picture
A detailed exploration by Martin Smith of Anthony Rosenbaum's painting of 47 Victorian chess players unveiled in 1880.
1. The Tableau
2. Who's Who
3. AWOL
4. Flog It
5. Pass
6. Close Up
7. Adonis
8. Mr Rosenbaum
9. Mr R Again...
10. And Now Mr S
And for a continuation of the series on a different blog see:
1. Waltzing Matilda, and the further six episodes on the chess, life and politics of Louisa Matilda Fagan, the strongest female player in late Victorian England.


Played on Squares
A short series by Martin Smith on chess as played by the Bloomsbury Group
1. Keynes
2. Fry
3. Fry, part 2 
4. Woolf
5. Strachey
6. Empire Days
7. Miss Strachey's Feeling For Snow
And two more episodes on a different blog:
8. Forster
9. Forster Part 2

Streatham Strolls 
Chess in and around Streatham (and beyond) in days of yore (in the company of MS).
Streatham Strolls 1 
Streatham Strolls 2
Streatham Strolls 3
Streatham Strolls In The Country
Streatham Strolls In The Country Continued
Streatham Strolls East
Streatham Strolls to Canada
Also
Streatham and Brixton Allstars
Not the Wimbledon Variation

War Game
A series by Martin Smith on chess played in the depths of the First World War...
War Game
War Game 2
War Game 3
...and the Second...
War Game 4
War Game 5
War Game 6
War Game 7
War Game 8
War Game 9
...and the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War:
Chess Art en Guerre
Chess Art en Guerre 2

When we were Kings Index
Please see the separate index to a series of posts, by Jonathan B, about international chess in the 1970s.