Monarch S Gambit

Monarch's Gambit: Tudors versus Spain By: Constance M Knepp-Holt Monarch's Gambit is a detailed account of the behind-the-scenes events that surrounded and fueled the 123-year "chess game" between Spain and the Tudor dynasty. As this work thoroughly demonstrates, these events did not just affect the key players of the monarchs but also filtered down to the commoners, and even crossed oceans.

Introducing a new book, bound in two volumes, not only containing an astonishing new "pure gambit" named the Miami Variation, but a very delightful, interesting and insightful adventure through a unique perspective of historical chess.

The national bestselling author of The Sword, The Ring and The Chalice returns the royal court intrigue, the castle secrets, and the crown scandals of her acclaimed trilogy. The throne was her destiny, until Princess Pheresa lost her groom, Mandria’s heir, to the dark magic that consumed him. Now Pheresa’s fate is uncertain, even when the great King Verence names her Princess Royal, because the title comes with one condition: She must take Lervan, a man of acceptable birth and rank, as her husband. Reluctantly, she agrees. Then, without warning, the old king dies. And Pheresa succeeds to the throne. But all is not well. Many fear that Pheresa has been weakened by the evil magic. Her enemies are strong. Her husband plots against her. And her only ally is the last man she would ever choose—and the one man she should never love.

This book is a state-of-the-art survey of all branches of the world's most popular gambit from the viewpoint of the player who wants to attack with the white pieces. Many of the world's top young players, such as Kramni, Anand and Shirov have invested enormous amounts of time and analysis into making lines of the Slav, Semi-Slav, and QGA into reliable, ambitious weapons for Black. This book concentrates concentrates on the lines which are at the cutting edge of White's counter-efforts, and provides a selection of aggressive repertoires against Black's older defences, including the Orthodox, Tarrasch and Semi-Tarrasch. No player who has read this book need be in any doubt how to meet Black's sharp approaches - be they modern, dynamic counter attacks or old, romantic gambits.

From the celebrated historian and author of Europe: A History, a new life of George II George II, King of Great Britain and Ireland and Elector of Hanover, came to Britain for the first time when he was thirty-one. He had a terrible relationship with his father, George I, which was later paralleled by his relationship to his own son. He was short-tempered and uncultivated, but in his twenty-three-year reign he presided over a great flourishing in his adoptive country - economic, military and cultural - all described with characteristic wit and elegance by Norman Davies. (George II so admired the Hallelujah chorus in Handel's Messiah that he stood while it was being performed - as modern audiences still do.) Much of his attention remained in Hanover and on continental politics, as a result of which he was the last British monarch to lead his troops into battle, at Dettingen in 1744.

A bestselling author in his own time and long after, Sir Walter Scott was not only a writer of thrilling tales of romance and adventure but also an insightful historical thinker and literary craftsman. Over the last two decades, scholars have come to see him as an important figure in Romantic-period literature, Scottish literature and the development of the historical novel. Walter Scott and Contemporary Theory builds on this renewed appreciation of Scott's importance by viewing his most significant novels - from Waverley and Rob Royto Ivanhoe,Redgauntlet, and beyond - through the lens of contemporary critical theory. By juxtaposing pairings of Scott's early and later novels with major contemporary theoretical concepts and the work of such thinkers as Alain Badiou, Judith Butler, Jacques Derrida and Slavoj Žižek, this book uses theory to illuminate the complexities of Scott's fictions, while simultaneously using Scott's fictions to explain and explore the state of contemporary theory.