Although I am a big fan of Nigel Short, for his humour, and John Nunn for his high intelligence and Jon Speelman for his Talmudic look and depth, it is Gormally who is my favourite British Grandmaster.

Both of us are from that much-maligned and daemonized race the London-Irish. We are unlucky enough to be paddies but not physically born in Ireland, so we are known to Irish-Irish as (gah!) Plastic Paddies.

For those of you that don't know, my full name is Alan O'Brien. One of my middle names is Larkin. LET THOSE WHO HAVE THE KNOWLEDGE UNDERSTAND THOSE THREE NAMES.

<LET THOSE WHO HAVE THE KNOWLEDGE UNDERSTAND THOSE THREE NAMES.>

"But essentially the essence of the book is trying to present the life of a chess pro who is struggling.

We all know about the stories of Magnus and so on, but what about 99 percent of chess pros who are making a hand-to-mouth existence, who are surviving from week to week, maybe an article here, a chess lesson there.

That’s what I wanted to convey to the reader, that it’s not all sweetness and light, that there’s this hidden struggle that we don’t always see portrayed by the chess media, who like to make out the life of a chess player to be one glorious cycle. And I hope I have achieved it in the book!"

http://en.chessbase.com/post/an-int...

One of the most chess depressing and very honest chess books I've read.

No.

It is the most chess depressing and very honest chess books I've read.

I bought mine for £2.99 in a 2nd hand shop. It's been quite a while since I bought a new chess book. I honestly cannot remember the last one bought new and I have (again) 500+ of the things. I usually manage to pick up three or four every month on my travels.

I sold 400+ of them in one go back in 1994.

I've bought one of my book twice from a 2nd hand shops. That always cheers me up.

I've almost never seen a reasonable chess book in a second hand/charity shop. There was one shop I used to regularly visit that had, like clockwork, a different beginner's chess book every month. It seemed that there was some poor sod sitting nearby DESPERATE to learn chess but finding book after book just too difficult.

On Edgware Road I once got a book by Polugaevsky; that was my best result.

New books are a very dicey business. Recently I bought Cyrus Lakdawala 's book on Bent Larsen.

There are loads of charity shops in Edinburgh. A few keep chess books aside for me.

Been lucky, the full set of Kasparov Predecessors for £10.00 and a doubler of Vol II a few days ago.

Recently Wade's 'Soviet Chess', Botvinnik's best Games, Chernev's 'The Russians Play Chess' and Kosten's book on endgames (which will join the pile of other unread books on the ending.)

Opening books, hundreds of the bloody things. I used to grab an obscure note and work that into my rep.