Chess history trivia

[Andrew Smith]

So you are kind of saying that he would probably have got the knighthood anyway just because his seniority in the civil service?!

[Christopher Kreuzer]

It will have been slightly more subtle than that. Milner-Barry received three distinct awards (OBE, CB, KCVO) and the gazetting of each will tell you what for.

[MJMcCready]

What, at Repstone Hall Nottingham 1936, was Lasker caught engrossed with but then strongly objected to being photographed with, abruptly casting that in his possession to one side to avoid being associated with it?

[Jon D'Souza-Eva]

I don't know the answer but when looking for it discovered this video of Lasker (and others) at Rempstone Hall which I enjoyed watching:
https://www.macearchive.org/films/chess ... stone-hall

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Amazing, thank you for that. Botvinnik's wife as well. Hope that wasn't who Lasker was caught engrossed with!

[MJMcCready]

Aha, it's not a who, its a thing. Hint: note the year of the tournament.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

A German flag or an item with a swastika on it?

[MJMcCready]

No but reasonably close.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

A religious item of some kind, a cross or bible?

[MJMcCready]

No, it was something connected to his homelands though and you were quite close with the first guess.

[MJMcCready]

The answer can be found in Botvinnik's Achieving the Aim.

[Jon D'Souza-Eva]

Lasker was reading a copy of the Berliner Tageblatt (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berliner_Tageblatt) that belonged to Bogoljubow. Apparently Lasker was living in Moscow at the time so his objection to being photographed holding that newspaper was entirely understandably.

[MJMcCready]

Correct

[MJMcCready]

In the winter of 48/49 an all-Russian tournament for which type of worker attracted 103,000 entrants?

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Socialist ones? Bad joke.

First actual guess: engineering workers?