'A remarkable book - perhaps the most intimate portrait of a chess genius ever written ...The Inner Game has all the compulsion of a good thriller' Robert Harris (author of Fatherland), Spectator 'Lawson does a superb job of evoking tension and narrative in a way that all the coverage at the rime failed to do ...the real flavour of the effort of analysis is captured and the dirty tricks and psychological warfare make good, sensational reading' Bryan Appleyard, Literary Review 'Lawson creates great drama out of his material...the tension is brilliantly sustained. And no, you don't have to be a chess expert or even to have played the game at all to enjoy this book' Simon O'Hagan, Independent on Sunday 'An engrossing study of a rarified world of eccentricity and achievement ...[a] tale of guile and skulduggery: bugged rooms, bribed coaches, tapped telephones, bluff and counterbluff. Much of it reads like a le Carre novel...A closely observed and hugely entertaining portrait of a prodigious British talent' Henry Marten, Sunday Telegraph If Nigel Short is the John Major of chess, Dominic Lawson is the Jeffrey Archer ...Whether you like Archer or not, you'll love Lawson' Daniel Johnson, The Times 'A riveting narrative' Observer Immensely readable . ..The characters come through very precisely' Stephen Tumim, Daily Telegraph 'Gripping narrative ...absorbing between-the-synapses account of an epic drama to which [Lawson] had unique access' Anthony Holden, Sunday Times 'Brilliantly written' Guardian Dominic Lawson is the editor of the Spectator. He has been writing about the world of grandmaster chess for over ten years, not just for the Spectator, but also for the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, The Times, the Daily Mail and the Financial Times, where he has a weekly column. He covered the 1993 World Chess Championship for BBC Television.