The host began with Good morning, your majesties, presidents, prime ministers and other dear guests.

They have turned a great old English institution into a shameful clip-joint. It's a shuddering, howling tragedy.

The queen sacrifice – the triumph of energy over matter – has always appealed to me in the abstract; and over the years I probably have had recourse to this weapon rather more often than I should. Nevertheless, it was quite a coincidence when in the British Championship in Torquay 1982, I sent no less than three Ladies to the Guillotine in just eleven games. / From their blood I reaped three points, which – combined with other acts of barbarism – sufficed for eight points from 11 games, clear second a point behind Tony Miles. / Here are those three ‘reginicides’.

The story was told him by an old servant of his family who was from Yungchow [modern Nanning] in Kwangsi, and who came from the cave people [aborigines] of that district.…There are well-known Siamese versions of the Cinderella story, and Nanning is very close to Indo-China.