As her husband often said, when a player at a county match almost apologetically reported a draw, “I don’t mind the draws – it’s the losses I can’t stand!”

Ron, constant support in chess since the age of 10, eventually died in April 1990, aged 86, but she stayed on in the family home of Brent Whim in Mannamead, Plymouth, until she began to suffer a series of mini-strokes, and she died there on 24th April 1999 at the age of 84.

Her chess belongings, mostly a couple of clocks and fancy sets, were sold at a specialist auction in London. Her special autographed board was bought for £900 by Terence Chapman, who in turn presented it to Gary Kasparov on the occasion of their challenge match.

The steely determination withHe and his colleague Graziella Pellegrini had tried this once before in 2006, but on a smaller scale. Back then, they successfully treated a 49-year-old woman with a large EB-induced wound on her right leg. Hassan’s condition was much worse—and he was just a child. Still, there was nothing else to try.

In August, De Luca and Pelligrini got the green light to try their technique. In September, they collected a square inch of skin from Hassan’s groin—one of the few parts of his body with intact skin. They isolated stem cells, genetically modified them, and created their gene-corrected skin grafts. In October and November, they transplanted these onto Hassan, replacing around 80 percent of his old skin.

It worked. In February 2016, Hassan was discharged from the hospital. In