Bobby Fischer - An icon from another time

IT would be hard to explain to anyone under, say, 40, the international excitement that surrounded America’s Bobby Fischer’s dethronement of Soviet Grandmaster and chess world champion Boris Spassky in 1972.

The Land of the Free and Home of the Brave had taken on The Red Menace and beaten it at its own game — at least that’s how it was packaged and believed by millions on both sides of what was a very real and dangerous divide. The win by the eccentric genius straight from central casting made him a Cold War hero and afforded the West bragging rights almost on a par with those won by getting the first man on the moon.

By being one of the first Americans to engage with Soviet Russia, Fischer — and Spassky — made a significant contribution to the end of the Cold War and the relative stability we now enjoy.

If we are to learn anything from Fischer it is that by opening doors we will find divided peoples all have much more in common than they imagined.