Exploring a bygone aspect of intellectual sport, this book details the history of British and Irish correspondence chess from the first formal match between Edinburgh and London in 1824 well into the 1980s, the most successful period in British correspondence chess.

It traces the development of postal chess, including the growth of regional and national chess associations after World War I; the dawn of game-changing technologies such as the telegraph, the telephone, radio, and fax machines; the earliest transatlantic matches between the U.S. and the U.K.:

the founding of the International Correspondence Chess Association in 1945; and the breaking of the Soviet monopoly on the world team championship in 1982 (the final act of the joint Great Britain team before Scotland and Wales obtained separate membership in the International Correspondence Chess Federation).

Appendices list tournament champions; I.C.C.F. title holders; known club matches; and interesting excerpts from rules and other documents. Extensive notes, bibliography and indexes.

Tim Harding (Ph.D., University of Dublin, 2009) is a Senior International Master of correspondence chess, and played on the Irish team at the 1984 FIDE Chess Olympiad in Thessaloniki, Greece. He lives in Dublin.