Potted history of BOARD GAMES

Playing games with family is a festive tradition and chess is one of the oldest in the world, going back at least 1400 years. Out walking in 1831, Malcolm MacLeod found a stone kist in the dunes at Camas Uig on the Isle of Lewis, with 12thcentury chess pieces carved from walrus ivory inside. The Lewis Chessmen are now in museums; the beach is a glorious walk.

Jigsaws are a less competitive option and educational too – invented to improve people’s geography. John Spilsbury, cartographer, started making them in the 1760s, pasting an atlas to thin wood and then sawing them up – say along country boundaries – to make a ‘dissected map’.

Since it appeared in the 1930s, Monopoly has probably sparked more family rows than any other game. Better instead to walk the board, starting from Go at Lambeth North Tube (halfway between the first property on the board at Old Kent Road and the last at Mayfair) and ticking off all 22 London streets and four stations. Find map and info at bit.ly/MonopolyMap

For a rural spin, check out Elite Cow, a Monopoly-style game where players upgrade their dairy herd by collecting pedigree semen as they tour the board. Hitting the shelves in 1986, its squares were sponsored by agri-businesses, so it was part game, part advert. See bit.ly/EliteCow and find the brilliant @TheMERL on Twitter.