Ken Whyld

Kenneth Whyld ( born March 6, 1926 in Nottingham, † 11 July 2003 Kirton Lindsey at Caistor ) was a British chess journalist and one of the greatest chess historians worldwide.

Whyld was a strong amateur player. He took part in the 1956 British Championships and won the County Championship of Nottinghamshire. His living he earned in the information technology industry. He also wrote books about chess and researched its history.

His most famous work is the Oxford Companion to Chess, which he published together with David Hooper. It is considered the standard work on chess generally in English. In 1986 he published Chess: The Records, an offshoot of the Guinness Book of World Records. In 1998 his standard work on Emanuel Lasker's games: The Collected Games of Emanuel Lasker. Whyld was also consultant to the Oxford English Dictionary for chess questions.

More of his works are Alekhine Nazi Articles ( 2002), a book about Alexander Alekhine's controversial Nazi propaganda articles and bibliographies Fake Automata in Chess (1994) and Chess Columns: A List ( 2002). His textbook Learn Chess in a weekend was translated into several languages; the German title is Chess: Light, fast and thorough. Between 1985 and 2002 he sent each Christmas a total of 17 booklets with chess historical essays to his friends. He took up an idea of the chess composer Alain Campbell White and the Christmas Series. Whlyds work was reprinted in 2006 under the title Chess Christmas in an anthology (ISBN 80-7189-559-8 ).

From 1978 until his death in 2003, wrote Whyld the column " Quotes and Queries " in the prestigious British Chess Magazine. Shortly after Whylds death was the Ken Whyld Association ( KWA ), founded an international association of chess book collectors and chess historians.

Whyld had a collection of about 4,000 chess books and chess journals. This was in 2004 by the Swiss Game Museum ( Musée Suisse du Jeu ) taken in La Tour -de- Peilz, cataloged by the Swiss chess historian and IM Richard Forster and now forms the basis of the recently opened Ken Whyld Library.

Fifteen months before his death married Ken Whyld for the third time. He knew his wife for decades.