Ken Whyld
Kenneth Whyld (born March 6, 1926 in Nottingham , † July 11, 2003 in Kirton Lindsey at Caistor ) was a British chess journalist and one of the most important chess historians worldwide.
Life
Whyld was a strong amateur player. He took part in the British Championships in 1956 and won the Nottinghamshire County Championship . He earned his living in the information technology industry. He also wrote books on chess and researched its history.
His most famous work is the Oxford Companion to Chess , which he published with David Hooper . It is considered the standard work on chess in general in English. In 1986 he published Chess: The Records , an offshoot of the Guinness Book of Records . In 1998 his standard work on Emanuel Lasker's roles was published: The Collected Games of Emanuel Lasker . Whyld was also an adviser to the Oxford English Dictionary on chess matters.
Other of his works are Alekhine Nazi Articles (2002), a book on Alexander Alekhine's controversial Nazi propaganda articles, and the bibliographies Fake Automata in Chess (1994) and Chess Columns: A List (2002). His textbook Learn Chess in a weekend has been translated into several languages; the German title reads learn chess: easy, quick and thorough . Between 1985 and 2002 he sent a total of 17 brochures with essays on chess history to his friends at Christmas time. He took up an idea of the chess composer Alain Campbell White and his Christmas Series . Whlyd's work was reprinted in an anthology ( ISBN 80-7189-559-8 ) in 2006 under the title Chess Christmas .
From 1978 until his death in 2003 Whyld wrote the "Quotes and Queries" column in the prestigious British Chess Magazine . Shortly after Whyld's death, the Ken Whyld Association (KWA), an international association of chess book collectors and chess historians, was founded.
Whyld had a collection of about 4,000 chess books and chess magazines. This was taken over in 2004 by the Swiss Game Museum (Musée Suisse du Jeu) in La Tour-de-Peilz , cataloged by the Swiss chess historian and IM Richard Forster and now forms the basis of the recently opened Ken Whyld Library.
Fifteen months before his death, Ken Whyld married a third time. He had known his wife for decades.
Web links
- Ken Whyld Association memorial page
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Whyld, Ken |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Whyld, Kenneth (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British chess journalist and chess historian |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 6, 1926 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Nottingham |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 11, 2003 |
| Place of death | Kirton Lindsey at Caistor |