Kenneth Whyld (6 March 1926 – 11 July 2003) was a British

chess Chess is a board game for two players. It is an abstract strategy game that involves Perfect information, no hidden information and no elements of game of chance, chance. It is played on a square chessboard, board consisting of 64 squares arran ...

author and researcher, best known as the co-author (with David Hooper) of ''

The Oxford Companion to Chess ''The Oxford Companion to Chess'' is a reference book on the game of chess written by David Vincent Hooper and Kenneth Whyld. The book is written in an encyclopedia format. The book belongs to the Oxford Companions series. Details The first ed ...

'', a single-volume chess reference work in English. Whyld was a strong amateur chess player, taking part in the

British Chess Championship The British Chess Championships are organised by the English Chess Federation. The main tournament incorporates the British Championship, the English Chess Championships and the British Women's Chess Championship so it is possible, although it ha ...

in 1956 and winning the county championship of

Nottinghamshire Nottinghamshire (; abbreviated ''Notts.'') is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands of England. The county is bordered by South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west. Th ...

. He subsequently made his living in

information technology Information technology (IT) is a set of related fields within information and communications technology (ICT), that encompass computer systems, software, programming languages, data processing, data and information processing, and storage. Inf ...

while writing books on chess and researching its history. As well as ''

'', Whyld was the author of other reference works such as ''Chess: The Records'' (1986), an adjunct to the ''

Guinness Book of Records ''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a British reference book published annually, listi ...

'' and the comprehensive ''The Collected Games of

Emanuel Lasker Emanuel Lasker (; December 24, 1868 – January 11, 1941) was a German chess player, mathematician, and philosopher. He was the second World Chess Champion, holding the title for 27 years, from 1894 to 1921, the longest reign of any officially ...

'' (1998). He also researched more esoteric subjects, resulting in works such as ''Alekhine Nazi Articles'' (2002) on articles in favour of the Nazi Party supposedly written by world chess champion

Alexander Alekhine Alexander Aleksandrovich Alekhine. He disliked when Russians sometimes pronounced the of as , , which he regarded as a Yiddish distortion of his name, and insisted that the correct Russian pronunciation was . (March 24, 1946) was a Russian ...

, and the bibliographies ''Fake Automata in Chess'' (1994) and ''Chess Columns: A List'' (2002). From 1978 until his death in 2003, Whyld wrote the "Quotes and Queries" column in the '' British Chess Magazine''. A number of chess historians, including Dale Brandreth, Frank Skoff and Edward Winter, all of whom had close contact with Whyld, came to question his reliability and bona fides on certain issues."Edge, Morphy and Staunton" by Edward Winter
/ref> Shortly after Whyld's death, the Ken Whyld Association was established with the aim of compiling a comprehensive chess bibliography in database form and promoting chess history. Whyld's library was later sold to the

Musée Suisse du Jeu Located on the shore of Lake Geneva between the cities of Vevey and Montreux, the Swiss Museum of Games in La Tour-de-Peilz is dedicated to the preservation, research and dissemination of various forms of parlor games. Unlike many other museums in ...

, located on the shores of

Lake Geneva Lake Geneva is a deep lake on the north side of the Alps, shared between Switzerland and France. It is one of the List of largest lakes of Europe, largest lakes in Western Europe and the largest on the course of the Rhône. Sixty percent () ...

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

(as reported i
number 152
of '' EG'').

References

External links

Tributes from the British Chess Magazine websiteReview of ''The Collected Games of Emanuel Lasker''Review of ''Alekhine Nazi Articles''The Ken Whyld Association
1926 births 2003 deaths English chess players British chess writers Chess historians 20th-century British chess players Writers from Nottingham Sportspeople from Nottingham {{England-chess-bio-stub