White king and red queen: How the Cold War Was Fought on the Chessboard, by Daniel Johnson
(Atlantic books, £22)
Even the title, White King and Red Queen, is a muddle: the “red” alludes to communism, of course, but why queen? Was there anything inherently feminine about the Soviet Union or its chess representatives? And what’s the significance of “white king”? “White” is not an adjective customarily applied to the democratic west; when used in opposition to communist red, it references the anti-Bolshevik side in the Russian civil war. And who are these two mythical personages meant to represent? The cover photograph shows Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer facing off over a chessboard, but it’s hard to see Fischer as a white king, and downright impossible to imagine Spassky as a red queen.
The muddle persists between the covers. The book is competently written and well researched, but it calls to mind Winston Churchill’s famous admonition, “Take this pudding away. It has no theme.”
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