Or is there?

I, like many chess players, am somewhat prickly when it comes to the use of chess analogies, metaphors, similes, and more or less any phrase that mentions our game and is uttered by someone who doesn't play it. Indeed, even when the use of chess seems not only reasonable but even interesting, I still can't help but feel incredibly grumpy about it.

And I have to admit, I don't really know why. It's not as if in a packed pub, with empty pints all round, and ten minutes to closing time, I haven't been heard to describe the sweaty mess of competing bodies at the bar as a scrum - yet I assume rugby fans don't want to tackle me to the ground and splash my face with mud in punishment, or whatever it is rugby players do to one another when they're cross about slips of language. See, I've never played the game, nor in fact known anyone who has. And 'slips of language', incidentally, is a cricket metaphor that sometimes catches people out.

Back to chess, or rather 'chess'. Why does it get to me so much? Maybe it's just the mass of examples in the news. From this last week or two, for instance, I can guarantee you that

• Sarah Palin didn't make a 'chess' move,

• Andy Roddick didn't execute a 'chess' game strategy,

• withdrawing from Iraq isn't like moving 'chess' pieces,

• the Maldives Journalist Association is wrong to accuse the Maldives Broadcasting Cooperation of playing 'chess' with Television Maldives' editorial board,

unless they, literally, enjoy friendly games over lunch together. And they haven't been.

No, like with dogs, a good chess simile should be for life, not just for Christmas - and there's no such thing as a good chess simile. Or metaphor, comparison, analogy, anything. Or so I had been telling myself until I read John Le Carré's The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. I know, I know, I know. "Aha!", you're thinking. "Chivers has been taken in by some Le Carré chess metaphor. Well, I'll show him in the comments what's what. Checkmate ahoy!"


But, no. The truth is much worse, much more distressing. Whilst reading this book, I kept on thinking to myself thoughts along these lines: this is just like a chess game. What will be the spy's next move across these sixty four squares of international espionage? Such strategy as to match a Grandmaster's! Bang bang bang bang: such thoughts would just shoot into my head, and nothing could be done about it.

WARNING: Plot spoilers ahead.

And note too that is not only regarded as the best spy novel ever written, not only regarded as one of the best novels ever written, but I personally recommend it. Yes, that's right. I do.

As I was saying: reading The Spy Who Came In From The Cold is, I confess, like watching a game of chess being played. A very good game in fact. There, I've said it. I admit it. How horrible.

But don't fear. I'm not going to try to convince you I'm right. For example, I'm not going to argue that Agent Leamas's well-calculated and cunningly-disguised journey from West Berlin to East Berlin resembles an elaborate knight's tour, just because it goes via HQ in London, a dingy local library, prison, and penultimately Holland, all seemingly to fool the enemy into thinking he's genuinely defecting rather than setting a trap. Likewise, I'm not going to argue that his British Communist girlfriend Liz Gold's straightforward route from the local library to East Berlin - taken one step at a time - the reader uncertain whether she is headed for some glorious coronation into the ranks of her Communist comrades - or whether she is merely to be sacrificed - having strayed too far from her British ranks - resembles that of an isolated pawn being pushed perilously toward promotion. That would be absurd.

Alec Leamas & Liz Gold in the film version of the book.

Just "pawns in the plot" says Leamas at the end, as he realises the truth. Not quite.

And anyway, we all know the key difference between chess pieces and people, the key difference that makes any comparison between the two pointless, right? In other words, simply that people have free-will, consciousness, and make their own decisions; chess pieces don't. Except, in this book, the calculations of the British spy boss Control take full account of the personhood of his operatives; their human feelings calculated out like a complex tactical sequence. Indeed Leamas is wholly lied to by Control, and as such behaves exactly as Control has calculated he will. Free-will counts for nothing: in each seemingly-novel situation each character faces, each decision each character believes they are making has already been factored in; their supposed decisions as inevitable as an only move.

Each decision, but one. In the final scene of the book, Leamas teeters on top of the Berlin wall. His superior officer George Smiley waits beneath him on the West side, calling him over to safety. On the East side, Liz's fresh corpse lies slumped beneath him, riddled with bullets. Surely he will jump to safety, then resume his career, or retire somewhere comfy. Surely he will choose the West. But, no. He chooses the East side, although he will die for it in the blink of an eye. He would rather dwell by Liz's body for a moment, than rejoin the rest for however long. And in choosing the temporary warmth of her crumpled figure, Leamas chooses to come in from the cold of the vicious game - even if it is for just one final fleeting moment, to be swiftly followed by his own mute slaughter.

And for the existential sake of our pieces, whom never complain about being bundled back into their boxes, adjusted this way and that, sacrificed and blundered left right and centre, we should be grateful there is no such equivalent of that in our little game.