Dead shockingly at only 46 in November 2001, the affable, peripatetic Tony Miles, a giant-slayer, took into history the achievement of becoming the very first GM in a country regarded before as a third-rate chess power. Fischer had accorded mid-19th century's Howard Staunton the accolade of being one of the all-time ten best, but the title of GM did not exist until 1914, when it was made official by Tsar Nicholas II and bestowed on just five men. In a chess world dominated by the Soviet Union, once-mighty England could hardly compete with Yugoslavia, Hungary, the US or even Argentina. Chess philanthropist Jim Slater, rescuer of the Fischer-Spassky match, offered a prize of 5000 pounds - said to be the equivalent today of 100,000 pounds, or $167,000 - to the first English player to gain the GM title. Miles nosed out Keene, with whom he would later have a troubling feud. His example set the nation en route to becoming a powerful beehive of chess playing and publishing and an Olympic contender.

Asked to name Miles' chief claim to fame, however, many would point to his playing 1...a6 against World Champion Karpov and winning. As demonstrated in 137 games and positions in this book, Tony Miles had a refreshingly original approach to the openings and the entire game. Ceaselessly traveling from one tournament to another, he probably had too little time for study and recourses like the English or Owen Defense(1...b6) filled the gap. (The well-prepared Browne was ready with a sacrificial attack that they dared to repeat years later.)

Miles' friend Geoff Lawton has done an admirable job of combing Miles' papers and conveying to us the GM's colloquial and humorous comments on these games. I cannot recall any such posthumous job being managed before. I imagine that most players' records of their games are incomplete and chaotic. (J. Silman is about to come out with a stupendous tome on a player whose score sheets looked like gibberish - Pal Benko.) The process of selection is not disclosed, and I suppose Lawton has published everything Miles wrote legibly about his games - as well as a few articles and the shortest book review in history. The result is not "My Best Games of Chess" but the most interesting games, the best, and a few of the worst, together with Miles' subjective impressions and feelings. The games and notes are sprightly and funny - the antithesis of Hubnerian hyper-analysis. Not always logical (since one side cannot pass from advantage to disadvantage without at least one "?"). Other friends are enlisted to pen fond reminiscences. When you close this book, you feel that you have known a delightful companion.

Where I fault this labor of love is its concealment of a known and public fact - Miles' mental illness. This distant writer heard of two psychotic episodes. In one, Miles tried to climb into 10 Downing St. to seek P.M. Thatcher's aid against someone he thought was plotting to do away with him. Did Lawton consider it bad form to mention this condition? I suggest that full disclosure would further our understanding of the fact that history's greatest chess champions have had a high rate of mental illness - even forgetting alcoholism. And it in no way diminishes Miles' stature: his achievement was in spite of this serious handicap.

I scarcely knew Tony Miles, losing to him just three times with Black, twice like a child. He was jovial enough after each game, but the encounters were long after the passing of the old leisurely tradition of one game per day, sometimes adjourned, followed by a friendly "post-mortem" analysis. He functioned at a high level, married twice, managed his own affairs. Per rumor, he disliked the effect of psychoactive medications on his chess skill, so skimped on them. He had stretches of bad performance, followed by successful ones. From time to time the condition, probably schizophrenia, overwhelmed him and got him in trouble. He was afflicted late in life with diabetes, which may require careful and compulsive self-management. No longer the world-beater of yore, Miles died shortly after enjoying a convivial night out with friends. The press cited heart trouble -the merest conjecture. Absent autopsy findings and toxicology, there is the nagging suspicion that his death was due to his behavior, due to his disordered thinking. I wish I could know.

Goodbye, Tony, and thanks for entertaining us so much, but not nearly long enough.

Click to see reviews of this book by Bauer, Donaldson and Watson.

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