En Passant
The Acclaimed Norfolk Chess Magazine
En Passant is the monthly Norfolk chess magazine. It is immensely popular – nearly 100 subscribers for a single county must be some kind of record, and it is probably read by far more than that number. It is also highly acclaimed, having been named BCF Magazine of the Year in 2004 and ECF Magazine of the Year in 2007 and 2009, the only years in which it entered the competition. Norfolk chess magazines have been produced on and off for several decades at least – one collection has them going back to 1964. Its current incarnation grew out of the results bulletins that the Norfolk League Controller, John Charman, sent regularly to club secretaries. That turned into the monthly En Passant in November 1995, and it has been published every month ever since.
What is in En Passant?
The magazine is normally 28 pages per month, and during the League season it leads off with the latest Norfolk League and Cup results and news. It then veers off into a view of life in Norfolk chess, featuring articles from players at all levels of Norfolk chess, bright annotated games – many with first class notes – humour, nostalgia, chess politics, and full colour photographs. The content is naturally generally parochial to Norfolk, but often it has wider interest. No En Passant goes by without a contribution by Mike Read or Dave LeMoir. Mike has played top board for England at correspondence chess (he is a correspondence chess Senior International Master), his chess writing has been published in National magazines, and his game annotations are of exceedingly high quality. He also writes reports of local tournaments. Dave has written three popular chess books and has contributed many articles to our national chess magazines. He too writes high quality game annotations, but also provides extensive and entertaining tournament reports, and has contributed several long series of articles - often humorous, sometimes quirky - whose wide ranging themes have included sacrifices and tactics, book reviews, instruction for players of all levels, his own experiences against titled players etc etc. John Charman was editor from the magazine’s launch in 1995 to October 2009. Then he handed over editorship to Dave LeMoir. From the November 2009 issue, the magazine has been available in printed form, as ever, but also in email form at a far cheaper price. The print version is available at £30 per annum for twelve issues, but the email edition is only £5 per annum for the same twelve issues (less than the price of two pints of beer at most pubs).
Try En Passant for free!
In the run-up to taking over editorship, Dave produced a 12-page trial issue of the magazine which you can download as two pdf files here. Just open them with Acrobat Reader, which is available on most computers and is available free on the internet. One file (En Passant Trial – Page View.pdf) displays the magazine page-by-page on screen, while the other (En Passant Trial – printable.pdf) is set up so that you can print it out in normal magazine (booklet) form. All of the content for this trial issue was written by Dave. It will give you an idea of the quality of the content that En Passant has to offer, and will demonstrate to you how easy it is to display it on screen and to print it yourself. (For those who take the printed magazine it is now professionally printed, so in real life it looks even better than the one that you can print for yourself. Dave has also improved his computer system since preparing the trial issue, so the real thing looks even better on screen and printed out from your computer.)
Subscribe!
If you would like to subscribe then send a cheque made out to David LeMoir to: 18 Strickland Avenue, Snettisham, King's Lynn PE31 7PY. Please include your name, address and preferred email address, all written clearly, preferably in BLOCK CAPITALS. The 2019/20 subscription runs from November 2019 to October 2020, and the magazine is normally despatched in the last few days of the preceding month. The price* that you should pay can be worked out as follows:
Email version (full year £5):
Subscriptions for 10, 11 or
12 months is £5. For anything less, simply multiply the number of months left
to by 50p. If you want all 12 issues (November to October) irrespective of
when you start your subscription, then make the cheque out for £5 and I will
email you all of the issues in that year that you have missed.
Printed version (full year £30):
Since we now use a professional
printer, each issue is printed only once, and we print exactly one copy per
subscriber. Therefore we cannot supply professionally printed back issues**.
I need to know how many copies to print by about the 25th of the month preceding
the month of issue (i.e. about a week in advance of publication). Make your
cheque out for £2.50 multiplied by the number of months left up to and including
October (i.e. a maximum of £30). If you have missed a month’s issue date,
or you have paid too much, I will mail a cheque to you for the amount overpaid.
* The price for 2019 to 2020 is unchanged from the above.
** I can supply back issues from my own printer as required. They will be
unstapled, on cheaper paper and of normal ink-jet printer quality. If you
want back-issues supplied in this way, then please let me know. The price
will be £2.50 per back issue. If you want more information before committing
yourself, please email Dave LeMoir at sueanddavid@hutchlem.plus.com
.