Chess Wars

Location: Radio 4
This play was based on the 1972 Fischer/Spassky world chess championship match, and appeared in the Friday Play slot, reserved for the most challenging plays on Radio 4. Its rigour consists in the transformation of extensive research (including interviews with some of those involved in the match) into a 60 minute piece of dramatic art, which balances the needs of the listener with the necessity of authenticity. The play makes use of particular innovative structural techniques developed by the author over his 25 year career as a radio dramatist. These techniques include use of multiple narrators and disembodied voices in order to tell the story clearly but at fast pace. The writer's objectives were to create a work that was faithful to the facts of the match, but which took the listener both into the minds of the participants, and into the particular and fascinating historical context of the event. The play was retransmitted across Europe, and a significantly rewritten German version was commissioned by WDR, and broadcast there 2200 hours 27th December 2006. Recordings of both versions in cd form are available.