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. 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 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 the occasional full colour photograph. 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 David 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. David has written several 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 David 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 £36 per annum for twelve issues, but the email edition is only £5 per annum for the same twelve issues.
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 subscription year runs from November October, 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 £36):
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 £3.00 multiplied by the number of months left up to and including October (i.e. a maximum of £36).
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.
If you want more information before committing yourself, please email David LeMoir at enpassantmagazine@gmail.com.
Down-Home Chess – the Anthology
From its launch in November 1995 to October 2009, En Passant was edited, printed and distributed by John Charman. We call those the John Charman Years. David LeMoir has collated an anthology of articles from the magazine during that period and entitled it Down-Home Chess. It is a large tome of 262 A4 pages, and retails at the very low price of £10. It is priced that way to spread the word about this remarkable, award-winning, publication. There is no attempt to make a profit. The early reviews of the book have been heart-warmingly positive (it was published a few months before writing these lines). It is available from Amazon and from CHESS magazine.