BBC R3 Documentary - 'From King To Pawn'
Broadcast in BBC R3's 'Checkmate' season
Music by Arthur Bliss
Presented by David Szalay
Broadcast December 19, 2010
Coded from a digital source at 128/44.1

BBC Blurb
Chess is known as the game of kings, but has an amazingly wide and
enduring appeal, it  cuts across so much that can divide us: age, class,
nationality, race. It's a logical game often played in an abstract, notated
form, and yet the fact that the pieces have characters and distinct roles
somehow catches our imagination. This personification  causes the game
to be of interest even to those who don't play, necessarily, and it's often
been depicted in art and fiction, many times as a metaphor.

How does chess mirror life?

The novelist and occasional chess player David Szalay presents an
examination of chess as an artistic metaphor in literature and modern
art, and how powerful personalities in  the game embodied the ideals
and beliefs of their time. The trajectory of the game  itself has been from
the palace to the laptop, for the game is now most commonly played on
computers or the internet.
Blurb off

Contributors
John Healy
Nigel Short
Marilyn Yalom
Dr Irving Finkel
Frederic Friedel
Dr David Hopkins
William Hartston

Comments from archive
Bobby Fischer
Boris Spassky
Dr Alekhine
Kasparov.

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