London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets Ahead.
Story time.
History time.
And on this day, May 27th, 1851, sixteen men sat down in London to glare silently at one another across little carved wooden armies.
Which may not sound like much.
But what was happening was revolutionary.
Because this was the first great international chess tournament in history.
The chess equivalent of the first World Cup.
Or perhaps the first heavyweight title fight.
Only quieter.
Much quieter.
No chanting crowds.
No fireworks.
No commentators shouting into microphones.
Just a lot of very intense Victorian gentlemen staring at bishops.
And occasionally at each other.
The tournament was staged in London as part of
the gigantic fever dream that was the Great Exhibition of 1851.
Earlier that month the Crystal Palace had opened in Hyde Park.
The Crystal Palace.
One of the most astonishing buildings London has ever seen.
Imagine if somebody built a mountain out of glass and optimism.
That was the Crystal Palace.
Victorian Britain showing off to the world.
Look at us! Industry! Empire! Steam! Iron! Progress! Massive colonial confidence! Enormous teapots!
And tucked away amid all that industrial swagger was this quieter, stranger spectacle.
Chess.
Not just any chess, either.
For the first time ever the best players in Europe had all been invited to gather in one city and find out who really was the best.
And where was this great cerebral showdown staged?
Not in a palace.
Not in Parliament.
Not even in the Crystal Palace itself.
No.
The world’s first international chess tournament unfolded on the Strand,
at the wonderfully named Grand Cigar Divan.
Today it’s Simpson’s in the Strand.
Back then it was one of the great chess haunts of Europe.
Picture the scene.
Cigar smoke thick enough to butter.
Coffee cups.
Newspapers.
Side-whiskered Victorians hunched over chessboards
in profound existential misery because a bishop had gone astray on move seventeen.
It was part café, part gentlemen’s club, part newsroom,
part intellectual boxing ring.
And beautifully Strand-ish.
Outside, omnibuses rattling past.
Newspaper boys yelling headlines.
London roaring away at full Victorian throttle.
Inside, silence.
Or near silence.
Just the click of chess pieces.
And the occasional soft groan of a man realising, twenty-seven moves too late,
that Adolf Anderssen had quietly dismantled his soul.
Now the driving force behind all this was a fascinating London character named Howard Staunton.
Staunton was England’s leading chess master.
A celebrity of sorts.
He wrote chess columns, organised competitions, promoted the game tirelessly and argued with rivals almost recreationally.
In other words,
a Victorian London columnist disguised as a chess player.
And Staunton understood something important.
If the Great Exhibition was bringing the world to London,
then London should stage the world championship of thinking.
So he organised it.
Not without drama,
by the way.
Victorian chess politics were apparently every bit as poisonous as modern Westminster politics.
Rival clubs sulked. Newspapers sniped.
People boycotted things. Egos inflated and burst.
Some things never change.
Sixteen competitors eventually entered.
England. Germany. France. Hungary. Russia.
International chess before international sport really existed.
And the great favourite was, naturally enough,
Howard Staunton himself.
The local hero.
The London man.
Only…
It didn’t quite work out that way.
Because into London came a quiet
German mathematics teacher named Adolf Anderssen.
Wonderful name.
Sounds faintly like a severe headwaiter in a Wagner opera.
Anderssen wasn’t even certain he could afford the journey.
Staunton himself reportedly offered financial assistance if necessary.
And then Anderssen arrived in London and calmly annihilated everybody.
Including Staunton.
Especially Staunton.
Beat him four games to one.
A proper drubbing.
Victorian London newspapers had a field day.
Because Londoners then,
as now, loved:
And Anderssen was indeed a genius.
Not just a strong player.
A romantic player.
Nineteenth-century chess at its wildest and most theatrical.
Sacrifices flying about the board.
Queens hurled into danger. Bishops flung heroically off cliffs.
Entire games resembling cavalry charges.
During the tournament Anderssen also played what became perhaps the most famous chess game ever played:
the so-called “Immortal Game.”
Now technically it wasn’t an official tournament match. More a casual game played on the side against the French master Kieseritzky.
But good lord.
At one point Anderssen sacrifices both rooks,
a bishop and his queen.
Modern computers look at this sort of thing and begin breathing heavily into paper bags.
And then somehow he wins.
The game became legendary.
Still studied today.
And there’s something wonderfully London about that.
The greatest chess game in history being played almost casually on the sidelines while outside London was busy admiring steam engines and imperial machinery and giant industrial looms.
Now here’s another thing
I love about this story.
No clocks.
No chess clocks yet.
Players could think for as long as they liked.
One player,
Elijah Williams,
became notorious for taking forever over his moves.
Observers complained he sat there in glacial silence while London gradually aged around him.
There are reports of games where he averaged nearly fifteen minutes a move.
Imagine modern sport tolerating that.
“Welcome back to Wimbledon.
Alcaraz still preparing the serve he started thinking about on Monday.”
And yes, this absolutely was a spectator sport.
People crowded round the boards watching.
Chess cafés
in Victorian London were fashionable places. Intellectual theatres.
Part sport, part gambling,
part social display.
And the Grand Cigar Divan itself was built for exactly this kind of thing.
One reason Simpson’s later became famous for its rolling silver roast beef trolleys was because diners didn’t want waiters constantly interrupting chess games.
So the food came silently to the players instead.
That is so London.
Cigar haze.
Roast beef on wheels. Whispered analysis. Somebody quietly muttering, “Good God, sir…” as Anderssen destroys another victim.
The tournament had opened the previous day, May 26th, and would run right through to July 15th, 1851.
Nearly two months of cerebral warfare on the Strand while outside London dazzled the world with industry and empire.
And here’s the lovely thing.
You can still see traces of all this today.
Outside Simpson’s there are decorative panels featuring chessboards and chess pieces.
Ghosts in plain sight.
Little reminders that this place was once one of the chess capitals of the world.
It’s one of the moves on our Inside Story – Covent Garden walk. Knight to King’s Bishop 3.
And that’s one of the joys of guiding in London.
You suddenly realise that what looks like mere decoration is actually fossilised history.
A coded message from Victorian London.
A whisper from 1851 saying:
“Howard Staunton was here. Adolf Anderssen was here. Great minds once battled over bishops and pawns in this very place.”
Which brings me to anniversaries.
Let’s hear it for anniversaries.
They matter because they give us a chance to line ourselves up with history.
To stand where something happened when the calendar comes round to meet it again.
There’s something deeply satisfying about being there when history taps us on the shoulder and says, “remember this?”
And, yes, bears repeating, this summer marks the 175th anniversary of the world’s first international Masters chess tournament.
Which means if you join us, visit Simpson’s this summer on our Inside Story – Covent Garden walk…
History, as they say in chess circles, quietly murmurs:
“Checkmate.”
“Check… mate.”
“Check this out.”
See you tomorrow.