The ISC, Oakham, ECSC and some good radio drama

The British end of the International Solving Contest (ISC) takes place in Sheffield this weekend: see the announcement on my website. There are plenty of places left (and there is a ‘minor’ section for weaker players) so if you fancy taking part, please contact me urgently. My email address is with the announcement.

Three weeks after that the final of the Winton Capital British Chess Solving Championship (WCBCSC) takes place at Oakham School. There is an open section alongside the closed British Championship, to which titled foreign solvers are invited – see this announcement for details and terms. I am just about to do the final typesetting of material for this event and that will be my priority after the ISC has finished.

At the end of March (earlier than has become normal) is the 2008 European Chess Solving Championship at Antalya, Turkey: see that announcement also. After Oakham, I shall be selecting the British 6-person squad, which hopefully will include a junior.

For the last two evenings at 21:15 I have been listening on BBC7 to two linked plays by Alan Plater, called Only a Matter of Time and Time Added on For Injuries. Being on BBC7 means that both of them were repeats and a bit of research shows that they were first broadcast in 1999, probably on BBC Radio 4, though I don’t recall hearing them first time around. Starring James Bolam and Alan David, both plays explore the differences between progressive and traditional viewpoints. They are set 150 years apart, and use the introduction of the railways, which led to standard British time, and the recent trend of Government apologies for past misdeeds as a foil between the characters, leading to some scintillating dialogue. For the next few days you can listen to these plays over the Internet and you can find the first of them here. Do give them a listen!

Now, to move from what was good radio drama, to what I hope will be good radio drama.

I am currently reading the third novel in Olivia Manning’s The Balkan Trilogy and am looking forward to reading the same author’s The Levant Trilogy, which I was happy to receive as a present at Christmas. All six books together make up Fortunes of War which was a BBC television drama in 1987, though as I have been without a television since 1984, I never watched it. In what is a welcome coincidence, I find from the new Radio Times that a new radio adaptation of the two trilogies starts next Sunday 27th January in the Classic Serial slot on BBC Radio 4 at 15:00, presumably repeated on the following Saturdays at 21:00. This serial will comprise 6 hour-long episodes. The cast includes Joanna Lumley (as narrator), Honeysuckle Weeks, Khalid Abdalla, James Fleet, Peter Marinker and the ubiquitous voice-actor John Rowe, whom we last heard as the polarizing character Jim Lloyd in The Archers. I shall have to make sure that I remain at least a novel ahead of the radio!