I wonder if the Tolkien fans on this board have ever read a letter Tolkien is said to have written to the government of Nazi Germany, which seemed to be anxious to bring out a translation of his work. Here is but one source (of many) for that letter. As I understand it, it is generally accepted to be authentic:

http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue260/l...

When asked by the Nazi government in 1938 to provide evidence of "arisch" (Aryan) parentage before a German translation of The Hobbit was published, Tolkien responded: "Personally, I should be inclined to refuse ... and let a German translation go hang. ... [I] should regret giving any colour to the notion that I subscribed to the wholly pernicious and unscientific race-doctrine." And later, in a direct letter to the Nazi government: "If I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people ... if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name [like Tolkien] will no longer be a source of pride."

Go JRR!!

Your opinion on the "Grandmaster" title?

I recently attended a lecture by GM Alex Yermolinsky in which he mentioned (if I understood him correctly) that the value of the Grandmaster title had significantly diminished over the course of the last century.

When I look at the history of the title as I understand it, it seems that he is obviously correct:

""By 810 [A.D.] the top chessplayers in the world were known and recognized and all had sponsors by powerful caliphs. In fact, the word Grandmaster was introduced by caliph al-Ma'mun in 819 AD." http://www.geocities.com/siliconval...

At this timeline, it is said that Caliph Al-Ma'mun gave 4 players the Grandmaster title in 819 AD: http://www.chessworld.org/timeline....

SBC's site mentions that, in 1914, five Grandmasters were proclaimed by the Czar: "Playing chess for money gained a bit more repute after the St. Petersburg Tournament of 1914 when Czar Nicholar II proclained the original Grandmasters - Capablanca, Lasker, Tarrasch, Marshall and Alekhine. http://www.angelfire.com/games/SBCh...

And the timeline mentioned earlier says that in the first FIDE list of Grandmasters (issued in 1949), 17 Grandmasters were listed. http://www.chessworld.org/timeline....

So, we've gone from four Grandmasters to five to 17 to the very large number we have today.

My question for you Raymond Keene is, do you think the Grandmaster title should be redefined to diminish the number who hold it? Or do you think some new title should be devised that would play the role of the old Grandmaster title in designating (say) the top ten players in the world?

Thank you in advance for your response.

A question for anyone: do we know how many Grandmasters there are in the world today?

there is inflation in everything-the danger of trying to think of a better title than grandmaster is that you end up with something ruritanianly ridiculous! in comparison with the number of people playing chess there are probably very few grandmasters.in any case there is already a titular hierarchy which goes like this:

world champion
ex world champion
challenger or vice world champion as the spanish sometimes say world championship candidate
grandmaster

mortensen -keene-thanks but i can think of some other games v mortensen which i enjoyed more!

tolkien-means brave and bold in middle high german or carolingian french or something like that-toll/kuhn modern german equivalent-wow what a letter-he really socked it to the nazis-wonderful-he does mention chess in the lord of the rings-anyone know where? i think its the greatest book ever written in english. shakespeare wrote plays which is something different.

one or two of my literary favourites while on the topic

shakespeare-closest to God that i can imagine
marlowe especially tamberlaine the great and faustus
keats on first looking into chapmans homer
paradise lost 1 and 2

http://www.tolkiensociety.org/

The home itself:

http://www.tolkienhouse.com/

and

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/timmor...

If you're on a fast connection (or if you're patient), let this site load, then click-hold-and-drag within the window to sweep back & forth & up & down around Tolkien's house & surroundings. Quite nice!

Thanks in advance.

For those who don't see a "point to the story" (like <mack>), I can only recommend Patrick Curry's works (here's a review of it at http://www.tolkiensociety.org/tolki... ).

was an actor
he was a liberal educationalist
he edited shakespeare-i have two original sets
he wrote a regular chess column
he wrote books which still sell well
he organised the first international chess tournament he lent his name to the pieces
he wrote the great schools of england
and to my mind he was world chess champion from 1843 to 1851

i dont think he wd have objected to a discussion,of the greatest book ever written taking place on his pages!!

my theory about arthur and camelot is as follows-camelot is camulodunum-colchester the original roman capital and a cavalry base for the roman legions ( knights on horseback)

http://www.bartleby.com/70/1151.html

[The entrance of the Cell opens, and discovers FERDINAND and MIRANDA playing at chess.]

Miranda: Sweet lord, you play me false.
Ferdinand: No, my dearest love,
I would not for the world.
Miranda: Yes, for a score of kingdoms you should wrangle, And I would call it fair play...

By the way, a few lines down the page we find the source for the title of Aldous Huxley's celebrated novel, "Brave New World":

[at line 202]:
O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in’t!

Incidentally, "The Tempest", along with "As You Like It" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream" are my three favorite Shakespeare comedies.

[P.S. Elsewhere, I have enthusiastically recommended Aldous Huxley's wonderful work "The Perennial Philosophy". I would like to point out that Huxley had undergone a profound change of perspective between the time he wrote "Brave New World" and the time he wrote "The Perennial Philosophy". This transformation is partly described in his book "The Doors of Perception" [a phrase borrowed from William Blake, and the title from which the rock band "The Doors" took their name http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Do... ]. I do not recommend the use of mescaline or other mind-altering substances in ones philosophical inquiries, but it certainly seems to have had an interesting (and salutary) effect on Huxley! More on Huxley: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldous... ]

As many of you know, there are scholars who dispute that William Shakespeare wrote the plays that bear his name. Among the leading candidates for those who *really* wrote the plays (if one embraces the view that it was not Shakespeare himself) are Francis Bacon (the famous philosopher), Edward de Vere (17th Earl of Oxford), and Christopher Marlowe (the noted playwright). (Indeed, the theory that Bacon wrote the plays is sometimes whimsically referred to as "The Shake-and-Bake Theory")

Well, for what it's worth, I found the following reference to Chess in Bacon's "Essays", particularly in his essay titled "On Boldness":

"For if absurdity be the subject of laughter, doubt you not but great boldness is seldom without some absurdity. Especially it is a sport to see, when a bold fellow is out of countenance; for that puts his face into a most shrunken, and wooden posture; as needs it must; for in bashfulness, the spirits do a little go and come; but with bold men, upon like occasion, they stand at a stay; like a stale at chess, where it is no mate, but yet the game cannot stir."

Source:
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~rbear/...

For more on the "Who wrote Shakespeare's plays" controversy, you might see:

http://www.bardweb.net/debates.html

My own feeling is that Occam's Razor favors the authorship of William Shakespeare himself. I simply don't think that the "evidence" for alternate authorship rises high enough to lead one in a different direction.

Monty Python have their own candidate for author of the Shakespeare plays (notwithstanding his last minute retraction):

http://mzonline.com/bin/view/Python...

I wonder if this isn't poking fun at the fact that Christopher Marlowe's death by the time he is said to have written the plays introduces a minor problem with the theory of his authorship...