Electric shock

To mark the UK’s decision to exit from the EU, I can think of no better example than the triple match victories of Howard Staunton against major European rivals, victories which established him as the de facto champion of the chess playing world. From 1843 to 1846 Staunton comprehensively defeated three leading opponents from France, Germany and Poland, St Amant, Horwitz and Harrwitz, in the process overturning the domination of France, which had previously been upheld by those great luminaries of the game Philidor and Labourdonnais. As a prominent Shakespearean scholar himself, Staunton could justly claim with Faulconbridge in King John (Act V Scene 7): ‘Come the three corners of the world in arms, and we shall shock them. Nought shall make us rue, if England to itself do rest but true.’
 
As Barry Martin pointed out in the June issue of Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster Today, Staunton also capitalised on his status as the civilised world’s leading master of chess, to promote the ingenious British commercial invention of the Electric Telegraph, otherwise known as Cooke and Wheatstone’s Marvellous Messenger.