England's First Chess Grandmaster

Lawton, Geof. Tony Miles: “It's Only Me”. England's First Chess Grandmaster. London, Batsford, 2003. In English. 287 pages, 2 plates with 7 photos. Original softcover.

From the preface:

In November 2001, the chessworld was shocked by the news that Tony Miles, England's first and most influential grandmaster, had died suddenly at his home in Birmingham at only 46 years of age. By way of tribute we have now compiled a selection of Tony's most interesting games with his own commentaries. Also included are some of his most memorable articles such as 'Has Karpov lost his marbles?' from Kingpin, together with a number of chess brain-teasers he set his readers and a rare interview he gave at Lone Pine 1980.

The majority of the annotations are taken from Tony Miles's chess column in the New Statesman which he conducted from 1976 to 1981 - a period in which he developed into a world class player - and from his contributions to Chess magazine, first as a budding junior and later as a hardened campaigner on the gruelling chess circuit.

“It's Only Me” is an anagram of Tony Miles, and was one of his handles on The Internet Chess Club.

Condition - Very Good: only slight signs of use.