English Chess Forum

Can anyone recollect which chess writer wrote, decades ago, that "New York, 1924" by Alekhine was an outstanding book but his "Nottingham, 1936" volume was terrible?

John Townsend wrote: ↑

Sat Mar 07, 2026 7:20 pm

Can anyone recollect which chess writer wrote, decades ago, that "New York, 1924" by Alekhine was an outstanding book but his "Nottingham, 1936" volume was terrible?

I'll bite...

Was it Richard Clewin Griffith?

I really do not know but his editorship of BCM spanned 1920 until 1937. If not then I will have another stab.

His book on Nottingham is more biased, but I think its a stretch to describe it as "terrible".

William Winter, perhaps?

John Moore wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 08, 2026 9:48 am

William Winter, perhaps?

That would be a decent punt. WW did tend to speak his mind a fair bit and probably not a big fan of AAs politics either.

I attempted to cheat and "look-up" the answer in my 1937 BCM bound volume but failed miserably.

Was it you then, John?

B.H. Wood?

Thanks for the feedback, but, having received several different guesses without sources, I have no straightforward way of verfiying which, if any, is correct. It wasn't a quiz question. I hoped that one of you would recall, from your copious leisure reading, who wrote that, as I would like to know.

Thanks again.

I might have missed the review in BCM but I did check the indexes without luck.

I have volumes 1 & 2 of Chess but they are w/o indexes which makes it rather tedious to trawl through the whole thing.

Maybe someone could keyword search the online version if this exists?

J.

I somehow doubt, for no particular reason, that it was in a review of the Nottingham tournament book. I think that it might have been considerably later and if it was, for example, William Winter, I'd be inclined to look in Kings of Chess or in the memoirs which were serialised in Chess in the early 60s. I no longer have access to either so this is all guesswork and not much help to John Townsend.

It was Golombek

Thanks, James. Could I have the source, please?

My first thought was Abrahams but now James has mentioned Golombek, his piece on Alekhine in 'The Penguin Encyclopedia of Chess' states Alekhine's most important works were, his Best Games Vol's I and II and New York 1924. (no mention on Nottingham 1936.) so that gives a hint he was not too fond of the Nottingham book.

Golombek could be pretty judgemental about these things - I recall his introduction to the original edition of The Encyclopedia Of Chess, which was then undermined by the numerous errors in it (picked up by a youthful Edward Winter amongst others) The later paperback edition corrected at least some of them but also majorly toned down the original intro.