Ray Keene OBE
Smoke and Drinkers
Great minds rarely conform. The golden age of chess produced champions whose brilliance was matched only by their colourful eccentricities.
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Ray Keene OBE
How a mediaeval thinker out of the box: Stupor Mundi, helped me to solve a Chinese puzzle
Inspiration often comes from unlikely sources.
Ray Keene OBE
Virgil’s wrong door - this way to the egress
The greatest literary mysteries are not always hidden in forgotten manuscripts. Sometimes they have been lying in plain sight for two thousand years.
Ray Keene OBE
Draughts, also known as Checkers
Before computers conquered chess, one extraordinary mathematician proved that human intuition could still outthink silicon.
Ray Keene OBE
Go and the Atomic Bomb
As Hiroshima vanished in the first atomic explosion of war, two Go masters calmly reset their scattered stones and continued their game.
Tony Buzan
Raymond Keene Interviews Professor Tony Buzan
Every complex machine comes with an instruction manual. Tony Buzan spent a lifetime asking why the most remarkable machine of all - the human brain - did not.
Ray Keene OBE
On the Shoulders of Dwarves
The greatest discoveries are often made not by choosing between science and the humanities, but by refusing to recognise the divide.
Ray Keene OBE
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, German intellectuals and the First World War
Conan Doyle's attitude to war seems, from the tenor of this passage, to be one of stoic acceptance, rather than enthusiastic celebration.
Charity
Tony Buzan: Headmaster of the Human Race
Tony Buzan believed that no one is born unintelligent - only that too many minds are never given the opportunity to flourish.
Ray Keene OBE
How to thwart those who would inveigle, obfuscate and deceive
If I have to write and think what I am told to write and think, in contravention of what I see to be the facts, what is the…
Mind Mapping
Tony Buzan and the Importance of Mind Mapping
The greatest revolution in learning did not begin with a computer. It began with a blank sheet of paper, a coloured pen, and a question: how does the…
Ray Keene OBE
Survival of the Fattest
From Darwin to Nietzsche, from giraffes to grandmasters, the battle for survival has shaped far more than the natural world.
Ray Keene OBE
Brave New Game
Every generation believes it has discovered a better way to improve humanity. Inevitably, it begins by rewriting the rules.
Ray Keene OBE
The Obliteration of Memory
Empires are conquered twice: first by armies, and then by the erasure of memory.
Ray Keene OBE
Milton’s Cosmic Game of Chess
Some games determine kingdoms. Milton imagined one that determined the destiny of mankind.
Ray Keene OBE
The Art of the Draw
Not every deadlock is a stalemate, and not every defeat is a checkmate. Chess teaches us the difference.
Ray Keene OBE
Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots?
What if at least one of the Princes in the Tower was never murdered at all?
Ray Keene OBE
The Obliteration of Merit: Labour Must Maintain Education Standards
Raymond Keene OBE argues that equality of opportunity must go hand in hand with academic standards, merit and intellectual freedom - and that education should teach us how…
Tony Buzan
An idea whose time has come
The greatest unexplored frontier is not outer space, but the twelve hundred grams of living matter between our ears.
Speed Reading
Tony Buzan, Synapsia and the Lost Art of Speed Reading
Speed reading was never about racing through books. It was about liberating the mind from inefficient habits.
Ray Keene OBE
Why The Future Belongs to Players
Beginning with Terence Tao's provocative observation, Grandmaster Raymond Keene OBE examines how chess, football, philosophy, and modern competition reveal a profound shift in the way excellence is created.…
Tony Buzan
How Creativity can be stopped by Bad Body Language
Creativity does not begin solely in the mind — it is influenced by the body as well. Drawing on psychological research, Tony Buzan explores how simple changes in…
Tony Buzan
Tony Buzan: The Accidental Professor
Professor Barry Buzan speech about his brother Tony Buzan, House of Lords, 7th October 2024. At a memorial celebration in the House of Lords, Professor Barry Buzan revealed…
Ray Keene OBE
The Samurai Mind
Five centuries after Miyamoto Musashi wrote The Book of Five Rings, its lessons on strategy, discipline and decision-making remain startlingly relevant. Grandmaster Raymond Keene OBE argues that chess…