My daughter has recently started a game of Dungeons and Dragons. Watching her preparations, I was reminded of how close games are to story telling. A game offers a plot outline, whether that involves buying London property, racing around the railroads of America for a bet, or fighting dragons in dungeons. A new chapter unfolds each time the game is played.

If games are stories, I wondered what would count as classic literature. Draughts and go, which date back at least 3000 years would be candidates. They represent a simple society, where all the pieces are identical and of the same value.

Chess is more recent, dating back about 1500 years, settling into a recognisable modern form in Europe by the fifteenth century. Chess, in contrast to draughts and go, describes a complex, stratified society, with extreme social inequality. In their differing sizes, chess pieces dramatise a ladder of importance, from a giant king and queen, through middle sized castles, knights and bishops, to the poor, bloody infantry of pawns who can be sacrificed without too many qualms if the wider strategy requires it.

However, look beneath the surface of Chess, and it doesn’t take long to pick up much subversive commentary. The pawns, for example might be the smallest and least powerful pieces, but their range of movement is actually the same as that of the king, who, in effect, is a pawn dressed up in fancy clothes. Equally interesting is the way real power lies behind the throne. The queen, with her unmatched abilities, provides a remarkable challenge to a male dominated society.

Between the pawns and the royal pieces, we have the castles, bishops and knights. Now for those of you who don’t play chess all you really need to know is that castles move in straight lines, bishops move on the diagonal, and knights move in an L shape, three squares forward and one to the side. At the start of a game, the bishops are closest to king and queen, with the knights next to the bishops, and the castles out on the edge of the board.

First the castles: what would their straight up and down movements make you think of? To me the castles suggest rationality, common sense, technical expertise, and discipline. They could be said to stand for the secular part of society. If I pictured a castle receiving a promotion, it would be on the basis of a rigorous exam. As the game begins, however, I can’t help noticing that the castles’ straight up and down approach to life is kept firmly out at the edges of the board, at a distance from the centre of influence. More favoured are the knights, closer to the king. Is it a coincidence that the knights, who owe their position to an accident of aristocratic birth rather than merit, come at their enemies from the side in a sneaky L shaped movement? Is there a subtle nod at the unfairness of life in the fact that the aristocratic knights sit closer to the king at the start of the game than the castles? Keep these questions in mind as we come to the bishops, who in the initial layout of pieces sit closest to the royal house. The bishops move not on the castle’s straight lines, but on a diagonal. Isn’t there a subtle hint of cunning in that direction of movement? In an unsaid sort of way, it could be significant that the two bishops cannot support each other as the castles do, because they can never back each other up on the same diagonal. They inhabit the same board, but live in different versions of it, the dark or the light squares. What does that make you think of? To me it suggests sneaky self interest, with hints of back stabbing division and closed mindedness.

Chess has long had an uneasy relationship with religious authority, suffering bans at one time or another from Muslims, Jews, Anglicans, Puritans, and most recently, the Taliban. These bans were generally related to perceived time wasting, or laws forbidding idolatrous depiction of people or animals. Perhaps the portrayal of the bishops in chess, is the game’s subtle revenge.

Chess is a game that is more subversive than conservative. It is ultimately also more reassuring than depressing, in the way it shows this whole ungainly, unjust mess of a society working in such intricate harmony.

Author Jonathan Coe, writing in 2015 about the career of the late David Nobbs, claimed that Nobb’s most famous book, The Fall and Rise Of Reginald Perrin, should be considered a classic. Initially I was sceptical that the story of Reggie Perrin, a 1970’s sales executive who fakes his own death and comes back disguised as someone else, could really be up there with Shakespeare.

First there were the dodgy jokes. While I laughed my way through some very funny sections, I nevertheless felt that some of the jokes were unwisely reheated from David Nobbs’ other career as a gag writer for TV comedians:

The driver got in the car and slammed the door.

‘Lead on, Macduff,’ said Uncle Percy Spillinger.

‘I’m not Macduff. I’m Carter,’ said the driver.

‘I spoke figuratively,’ said Uncle Percy Spillinger.

‘Macduff’s got ’flu,’ said the driver.

That joke could have have helped fill the half hour on The Two Ronnies.

Apart from the odd less than ground-breaking joke, there was the bigger problem of accepting that a man could come back to his family, a bit older, greyer, suntanned, new bearded, and with nothing more than some am-dram experience, fool them into believing he is someone else.

AlI this being said, I still found myself fascinated by the story of an average man who wants to be something more. Reggie Perrin is a classic 1970s executive suffering a typical midlife crisis, hoping to escape his humdrum fate. David Nobbs does some very interesting things with the theme of fate, making you realise that we can never escape our destiny because what ever happens to us, no matter how bizarre, turns into what we are destined to do. Achieving something special does not involve leaving ordinary life behind, but finding remarkable qualities within it. This reminded me of that great tome of classic modern literature, the Alexandria Quartet, where Lawrence Durrell writes that our aim should not be to evade destiny, “but to fulfil it in its true potential.” David Nobbs makes the same point more succinctly, and with more laughs.

Overall the theme of fate is handled with such sensitivity and wit that I couldn’t help thinking of parallels with other authors who have written about the same thing, authors like, oh I don’t know, Shakespeare. Talking of Shakespeare, we could go back to my gripe about the veracity of Reggie fooling everyone with his disguise. Are all the cases of mistaken identity in Shakespeare always totally believable? Without the benefits of advanced prosthetics and a team of theatrical makeup artists, can shipwrecked Viola in Twelfth Night really concoct a disguise which persuades everyone that she is her brother? And dashing into the woods to escape her father in As You Like It, is it realistic that Rosalind manages to disguise herself as the sort of man capable of turning the head of shepherdesses? While we are on the subject of Shakespeare, let’s not forget that his plays have their share of dodgy jokes. What about all those puns? “You have dancing shoes with nimble soles. I have a soul of lead,” says Romeo. Did you get that – sole sounds like soul? If the Two Ronnies were working in the sixteenth century they might have passed on that gag.

By the time I reached the end of Fall and Rise, I’d decided that a rather silly romp could actually be a classic story.