Bobby Fischer, who died on January 17 aged 64, was a high school dropout who may have been the greatest chess player of all time, but ended his life in eccentric seclusion. The United States-born player had lived for the last two years in Iceland after serving eight months behind bars in Japan.
Sam Sole, the M&G's award-winning investigative reporter, and Matthew Burbidge, news editor of the M&G Online, interviewed Seymour Hersch, the original newsman, who says "The wonderful thing about our profession is if we do it right, stories are not Democrat or Republican, left or right, hawk or dove, pro or anti-government. Stories are stories, and they're just the truth."
United States President George Bush described his mood as "a little wistful" on Saturday night as he attended his last White House correspondents' dinner. The president, who is said by those around him to detest journalists, has given the impression down the years that he would rather be somewhere else.
Robert Kagan, author, essayist, former diplomat, pre-eminent thinker of what is called "neoconservatism" -- and now foreign policy adviser to Republican presidential nominee John McCain -- would like it to be known that there are many things that he is not.
So the king is dead, the game over. Bobby Fischer -- perhaps the greatest player in the history of chess, certainly the most charismatic and controversial -- has died of kidney failure in his adoptive home, Iceland. But Fischer the chess genius died more than 30 years ago.
