The History of Professional Chess in Britain, 1774-2000

Adrian Harvey obtained a BA, majoring in History, in Humanities at Hatfield Polytechnic, an MA in Victorian Studies at Birkbeck College (London University, England) and a DPhil in Modern History at Nuffield College (Oxford University, England). He worked for London University’s Birkbeck College and the Workers’ Education Association, teaching History and English. His main focus is on the history of recreation, notably his PhD, The Beginnings of a commercial sporting culture in Britain 1793-1815 (1994). A year later, Football’s first hundred years: the untold story (2005) completely rewrote the game’s history. Thus far he has had 14 articles published on football and 16 on chess. The latter appearing in Caissa, Chess, Kassiber, Kingpin and Sport in History. Some of these have been translated into German and Italian. Additionally, he has work published on other topics, such as the history of the Paralympics, and was responsible for articles on nine people in The Oxford New Dictionary of National Biography (2004).