“The vast majority of chess games witness familiar strategies and well known tactical motifs. These are the games that you will find in the anthologies and opening repertoires. Sometimes however, games appear that seem to have been played on a different planet.
Conventional strategies go out of the window. Familiar tactical themes are nowhere to be seen. Chaos has broken out. The pieces appear to be in open rebellion and are steadfastly refusing to do the natural jobs that they were designed for.
Having to navigate a path in such a game can be a nightmare. Do you rely purely on calculation? Is it better to trust your instincts? Can you assess the position using “normal” criteria?
In order to answer these questions, prolific chess author and coach Cyrus Lakdawala has assembled a collection of brilliantly unconventional and irrational games. The positions in these games appear almost random. Kings have gone walkabout, pieces are on bizarre squares, huge pawn rollers are sweeping all before them.
Irrational chess is like nothing you’ve seen before. As well as being highly instructive this is a hugely entertaining book.
Do not adjust your set. It’s chess, Jim, but not as we know it.”
and about the author:
Cyrus Lakdawala is an International Master, a former National Open and American Open Champion, and a six-time State Champion. He has been teaching chess for over 30 years, and coaches some of the top junior players in the U.S.
As with every recent Everyman Chess publication high quality paper is used and the printing is clear. Each diagram is clear as is the instructional text. Figurine algebraic notation is used throughout and the diagrams are placed adjacent to the relevant text.
Here we have another title from the ever prolific keyboard of Cyrus Lakdawala. Irrational Chess seems like a good match for this author’s sometimes irrational writing style.
But my first question is: what makes a game irrational? If you watch two beginners playing, their moves will mostly be irrational because they have little or no idea what they’re doing. We’re really talking about games between strong players where no one really knows what’s going on. Games where pieces end up on unlikely squares, where there are unusual material imbalances, where one player has decided to take a risk, or to confuse his or her opponent.
As Mikhail Tal, the Patron Saint of Irrational Chess said, “You must take your opponent into a deep, dark forest where 2+2=5 and the path leading out is only wide enough for one.”
That, for the most part, is what you’ll find here. We all enjoy playing through and studying games of this nature. Some of us enjoy playing games like this ourselves as well.
In his rather rambling introduction, Lakdawala tells us how to identify positions of disorder/irrationality.
He offers 12 pointers, for example:
1. A lack ofcontinuity, in that one thing doesn’t necessarily logically lead to what we expected. In this book we try to decode the “without words” positions, which cannot be accessed logically/verbally broken town and explained easily. In such positions the logical mind tends to transform atavistically into a kind of animal consciousness, where nothing is fixed and we are engulfed in a deep realization of terrifying impermanence, where all which matters is our survival.
2. You are lost in the woods and hungry. Then you come upon a patch of unfamiliar berries and mushrooms which could be edible or could be poisonous. The question is: are you going to risk eating them? This book examines the mechanics of risk. Go too far and you overextend; play too safely with too strong a self-preservatory instinct and you may suppress opportunity.
and…
10. While the Sesame Street Muppets taught us that learning can be fun, in this book we look at games so irrationally complex that it is actually difficult to learn from many of them. Nonetheless, in a position’s confusion, just because we lose our faculty of sight, doesn’t also mean we also lose our power of reason. The idea behind this book is: any position, no matter how complex, can still be broken down (at least to some degree!) into points of data, from which we hope to come up with the correct idea. So before most of the examples, I try my best to “explain” that which is often unexplainable. In such positions when we think: “I have a strong intuition on the matter”, it won’t be code for “I’m taking a wild guess!”
If you’re at all familiar with this author’s work you won’t be surprised by all this chattering about Muppets and mushrooms. Cyrus has a devoted fanbase who will lap this up, but it’s not to everyone’s taste.
Reading on, what we have here is eight chapters: four relatively long chapters, covering Attack, Defence and Counterattack, The Dynamic Element (I’m not sure how exactly this differs from Attack, but never mind) and Exploiting Imbalances, followed by four shorter chapters, on Irrational Endings, Opening Shockers, Crazy Draws and Promotion Races. We have 89 games or extracts, copiously illustrated with many diagrams.
Cyrus, quite rightly, is a devotee of active learning, sprinkling his annotations, as he always does, with exercises (Planning, Combination Alert or Critical Decision). You might like to cover up the page and try to solve them before reading on. The author is a highly experienced annotator who knows his market well. He’s always thorough, but without going over the top with long computer generated variations, and makes ample use of the latest engines to ensure accuracy. Once you get past the verbiage, he does an excellent job of explaining complex ideas and tactics in a way that is understandable to his readership.
You’ll find most of the greats featured within the 400 pages, from Morphy and earlier through to Carlsen and AlphaZero. You might consider the likes of Capablanca, Euwe and Smyslov to be supremely rational players, but they’re there as well. Tal, unsurprisingly, features on several occasions, but there’s no sign of Alekhine.
If you’re knowledgeable about chess history and literature you’ll encounter a lot of old friends, but they will always be new to some readers. There were quite a few games that were new to me – and I much enjoyed discovering them for the first time.
I wouldn’t dispute the irrationality of most of them, but there were one or two, especially in the first chapter, which you might consider were just very well played attacking games. How would you judge this much anthologised game? (Click on any move for a pop-up window.)
On the other hand, there’s no argument about the irrationality of games like this, described by Lakdawala as one of the most crazy, head-spinning games in the book.
My heart is thudding, as if watching a Quentin Tarantino movie while on the treadmill is how Lakdawala introduces the following encounter.
A small historical point – the game Van der Loo – Hesseling (Game 75 here) is known to be a fake, with White’s name usually given as Van de Loo, but the author is apparently unaware of this.
Irrational Chess is produced to this publisher’s customary high standards: well laid out with many large diagrams. This book will appeal to players of all standards, and will undoubtedly bring a lot of pleasure to a lot of readers, demonstrating, to anyone who might doubt it, the excitement and richness of chess. Lakdawala’s obvious enthusiasm and love of chess shine through everything he writes, but his eccentricities will always divide the critics.
If you’re easily offended you should perhaps steer clear. If you’re on the religious right you’ll find some of the words blasphemous, while elements of the woke left will consider other words to be mental health slurs.
Then you read something like this:
Black’s position pulls him down, like our demanding, emotional, high-maintenance college ex-girlfriend.
Or this:
If Fischer’s pawns are an athlete’s body, then his rook represents the love handles.
Sexist? Inappropriate? It’s your decision. A sensitivity reader would have a field day with his/her red pen. You might think, and I might well agree with you, that a lot of people these days are over-sensitive, but we are where we are. The author’s many devoted admirers don’t seem to have a problem.
If you’re a Lakdawala fan, and there are many around, or if his writing style appeals to you, you’ll really enjoy this book, and the often extraordinary and thrilling games featured within. The games are certainly a lot of fun, especially if you haven’t seen them before. If you find Cyrus’s writing fun as well, there’s no reason to hesitate.
As the British Championships are taking place in Leicester as I write this, it seems appropriate to stay in my father’s home city a while longer and meet one of its finest ever players. Unless you’re in the habit of perusing old newspapers and magazines from a hundred years or so ago, you probably haven’t heard of him. Yet, for about 20 years he was almost invincible in local competitions and more than held his own on top board in county matches when facing some of the country’s strongest players.
Because he chose not to take part in events such as the British Championships or Hastings he never became a household name. Had he done so, he would certainly have performed well at Major Open level, and perhaps gained the experience to reach championship standard.
His name was Victor Hextall Lovell, and his birth was registered in the first quarter of 1889. He was probably born on 31 January that year, although there are some inconsistencies in public records. His father, Walter, ran a wholesale confectionery business and was also involved in civic affairs, becoming a local councillor representing the Conservative Party, an Alderman, and, in 1918, Mayor of Leicester.
Victor was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys, following in the footsteps of Henry Ernest Atkins. A few decades later, Richard and David Attenborough would also be educated there. It seems that, on leaving school, he joined his father’s business and, at the same time, started playing chess in the county league.
The earliest game I have for him is an odds game against Atkins, who was no doubt something of a mentor to young Victor. The master was successful on this occasion, despite giving his pupil the odds of a rook. To play through this or any other game in this article, click on any move for a pop-up window.
It soon became clear that here was a young man of great promise and, by 1910, he was already playing on Board 7 for the county team, winning, in this game, against piano dealer Frederick William Forrest, who miscalculated badly on move 17. (Did he have any connection with the Forrest Cup, since about 1934 the Midland Counties Individual Championship?)
In 1914 Victor Lovell won the county championship for the first time. How appropriate that Victor should be victorious while Miss Champ became Ladies’ Champion. He was also appointed to the role of Hon Secretary, a post he would hold for a quarter of a century.
But then war broke out, although club and county chess continued into the Spring of 1915, when Victor retained his title. Lovell did his bit for the war, serving as a corporal in the 298th Siege Battery of the Royal Garrison Artillery, but was still able to attend the county’s 1916 AGM where he was re-elected as the Hon. Secretary. He saw active service in Ypres in 1917, but he was also ‘attached for a while to the staff of some great man with whom he played innumerable Allgaier Gambits‘ (Gould).
It was not until January 1920 that county matches resumed, with Lovell, now clearly Leicestershire’s leading player, on top board. In 1921 he picked up where he left off, winning the first post-WW1 edition of the county championship. The following year he was unexpectedly beaten by Edward Heath Collier, but resumed his winning ways in 1923. Unfortunately there don’t seem to be any scores of his games available for this period, when he was approaching his peak. Local newspapers had got out of the habit of publishing games, and he didn’t compete in external events.
Apart from taking part regularly in club and county matches, Lovell also visited other clubs in the county, and later also schools, to give simultaneous displays.
There was, for many years, some confusion in Leicestershire chess because the main club in the city, calling itself Leicestershire, was responsible for running the county teams and championship as well as competing in the local league. In 1923 they decided not to enter the league, but to concentrate on running internal competitions. VIctor Lovell decided to join the Vaughan College team. Vaughan College, which would later become part of Leicester University, was a Working Men’s College, providing further education for men from what would then have been considered working class backgrounds. The idea of self-improvement for those involved in manual labour was a big thing at the time in many industrial towns and cities, especially so in Leicester. This was my father’s background, but that’s a story for another time and place.
Victor’s chess life continued in very much the same way throughout the 1920s. Here, you can see a caricature from 1927.
Leicester Daily Mercury 10 December 1937
In 1930 he won a game in only 14 moves against Warwickshire’s Arthur John Mackenzie, who had been one of the country’s strongest players in his day, but was now rather past his best.
Later the same month he was playing in, rather than giving a simul, against his old mentor Henry Atkins. This time he came out on top.
Victor Lovell, apart from being the county’s leading player, was always eager to support youngsters. Aside from vising schools to give simultaneous displays, he also coached the young YMCA player George Percy White before he played in the 1933 British Boys Championship.
Leicester Daily Mercury 20 April 1933
George, who had been born on 13 February 1916, did indeed give a good account of himself, finishing in 4th place out of 12 in the Championship section, Alfred Down retaining his title. Most of the other competitors were Grammar School boys, but George was from a working class background: his father was a warehouseman at British United Shoe Machinery, one of Leicester’s largest employers. British United themselves fielded strong teams in the Leicestershire League, but he preferred to play for the YMCA. He was also, I believe, the great-grandnephew of my 3rd cousin 3x removed’s husband. The last chess record I can find for him is selection for a county match in 1938. In 1939 he was working as a dye turner and fitter in shoe machinery, like his father, I suppose, for British United. He married in 1941 and had two children, dying in Leicester in 1985.
There was now a new star on the Leicester chess horizon by the name of Alfred Lenton. Not only was he a fast improving player, he was also a young man with a passion for both reading and writing. In 1933 he started a weekly column in the Leicester Evening Mail in which he often published games from local as well as national and international events. You’ll be able to read a lot more about young Alf in future Minor Pieces.
From here until the column terminated due to WW2 we have a number of Victor Lovell’s games available.
He was ruthless against weaker opponents who failed to calculate accurately, as here against the aforementioned Donald Gould.
In a club match against Hinckley he scored another crushing victory against an opponent who didn’t know the opening well enough (11. d4 was correct). Henry Richmond Fisher was a Medical Officer of Health: one of his brothers was Geoffrey Francis Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1945 to 1961.
At about this time, Lovell, clearly a man ahead of his time, was playing the currently popular London System in some of his games.
In this game he gained revenge for a defeat against the same opponent, also with the London System, the previous year.
The 1934 Leicestershire Championship proved to be a close-run affair, coming down to their individual encounter in the last round. This time it was the older man who prevailed.
Gould takes up the story.
Lightning chess was becoming more popular, and here we have a game from a speed tournament later in 1934. Arthur Ernest Passant had an older brother, Norman Edward Passant, who also played. He really should have reversed his forenames to become EN Passant. The family later moved to Worthing, where, in 1939, Norman was a bank clerk and Arthur a commercial artist.
But by 1935, Victor Lovell’s health started to fail: he had a weak heart. His results became more erratic and his run of twelve consecutive victories in the county championship came to an end at the hands of Lenton.
On a good day, though, he was still able to play powerful chess, in this game using Bird’s Opening (he was also partial to Bird’s Defence to the Ruy Lopez). ‘Rimmington, short and tough, looked like, and was, a rugger forward‘ according to Gould. He was also a cricketer.
Rimmington’s father was a well-known leather dealer who had had numerous brushes with the law concerning motoring offences. His sons were also no angels. Take a look at this.
Sheffield Evening Telegraph 19 August 1919
Yes, it seems that Phillip, the younger of the two naughty boys, had spent perhaps eight years in Desford Industrial School, as it was then, a decade or so before the boys we met last time. Unlike them, he became a strong player, a regular in the county side up to 1939, and still playing occasionally after WW2. He was also a respected administrator at the Leicester YMCA Chess Club. I wonder if he learnt his chess at Desford. (His brother William was in trouble again in 1934, fined for stealing a Dance Trumpet valued at £19.)
Lenton won the county championship in both 1935 and 1936, but Lovell was still active in many areas of chess. In this photograph he’s taking on a group of boys at the YMCA, where chess seems to have been very popular.
Leicester Evening Mail 03 January 1936
Alfred Lenton didn’t defend his title in 1937, leaving the way clear for Lovell to take his 15th and final title.
Lovell features in two group photographs from this period. This is the 1937 county team, with Victor Lovell second from the left in the middle row. Infant jewel thief Phillip Rimmington is on his left and Alfred Lenton on his right.
This was taken at a 1936 lightning tournament: Lovell is seated on the far right.
In an article on local chess history in the Leicester Mercury, Donald (styled as Donn) Gould had some amusing anecdotes to relate, one of which referring to a game you saw earlier in this article.
Leicester Daily Mercury 10 December 1937
By the time we reach the late 1930s we come across players I knew three decades or more later, as witnessed in this county championship semi-final against Surrey.
Leicester Evening Mail 12 October 1938
Surrey fielded Harry Golombek, a Major Piece who deserves a full biography, on top board. Then there are the two Alexanders, unrelated both to each other and to CHO’D Alexander, both of whom may become subjects of future Minor Pieces. Felce was from a famous family of chess players and administrators. Cordingley became a publisher of chess books. Wernick’s name lives on in a trophy competed for in Surrey. Tregaskis has already featured here. Coles became a respected author and historian – and also beat me in the Surrey Trophy. From a personal perspective, the most significant name is that of Jack Redon, losing here to the unfortunately initialled Vincent Dwelly Pavord. Again, you’ll find out more in a future Minor Piece. I’m not, as far as I know, related to either James, but I do have a distant family connection with one of the other participants. Watch this space.
In 1939 Leicestershire scored a big win against Worcestershire in the final of the Midland Counties Championship. The games on boards 1, 2 and 16 were published: Board 2 (perhaps I’ll publish it in a future Minor Piece) was adjudicated a draw, but Stockfish tells me Lenton, a pawn up in a bishops of opposite colour ending, was unfairly done out of half a point.
There are again some interesting names on both sides.
Staffordshire Advertiser 11 March 1939
You’ll notice that Henry Atkins was back playing for his home county on top board. Leicestershire’s Board 7, Alfred Oakley Thompson, was a brother of the eccentric John Crittenden Thompson, author of this rare booklet (there should be a copy somewhere in the Chess Palace). You’ll also spot two Minor Pieces, Horsey and Bishop, in their team: they’d later be joined, on a higher board, by AA Castle.
Victor Lovell’s opponent has already featured in an earlier Minor Piece. Worcestershire also fielded the blind player Reginald Walter Bonham on Board 2, and his friend and teaching colleague at Worcester College for the Blind, Robert Douglas Wormald, on Board 4. Of particular interest to me was their Board 20, Keith Southan (not Southam), who later moved to Twickenham, teaching Classics at Tiffin School in Kingston. I knew him well at Richmond & Twickenham Chess Club between the mid 1960s (when he kindly gave me lifts to away matches) and the mid 1970s.
Here’s a game from 1939 between Gould and Lovell, from a match between former pupils of Leicester’s two most prominent Grammar Schools at the time. Gould, like Lenton, was a former pupil of Alderman Newton’s Grammar School, while Lovell, like Atkins, was a former pupil of Wyggeston Boys’ Grammar School. Lenton and Atkins split the point on top board, Charles Hornsby, whom I beat in the Leicestershire League thirty years later, lost on board 7 or the Old Wyggestonians, who, nevertheless, beat the Old Newtonians 4½-3½.
The 1939 Register finds Victor at 42 Dovedale Road Leicester, along with a housekeeper. If he’d travelled a mile and a half or so to the west he’d have encountered my father and his family in Sheridan Street. I’d like to think they passed each other somewhere along the way.
I’ll leave it to Donald Gould to relate Victor Lovell’s rather sad endgame.
The Leicester Evening Mail published this obituary.
Leicester Evening Mail 23 April 1940
And there you have the all too short life of Victor Hextall Lovell, a legendary figure in Leicester chess. At his best, round about 1930, he must have been round about 2250 strength by current standards and they still make a good impression today. He was solid and consistent, with a sharp tactical eye: perhaps it’s to be regretted that he chose not to test himself outside his county. Lenton was of the opinion that he had the talent to become one of the country’s strongest players. Instead, never marrying, he chose to devote his life, outside his family confectionery business, to supporting and promoting chess in his native county.
One final thing. In 1960, his scrapbooks and scoresheets were, along with a lot of other documents of historic interest, in the possession of the Leicestershire Chess Club. I wonder what happened to them. Perhaps they’re now in the ECF Library at De Montfort University. I’ll try to find out, but, if you have any information, do get in touch.
Sources:
Chess in Leicester 1860-1960 Centenary History of the Leicestershire Chess Club (Donald Gould): thanks to Ivor Smith, whose copy I now have, and to Ray Cannon for telling Ivor I would be interested and delivering it to me.
Last time I looked at chess in Desford Approved School in the 1930s, introducing you to the two men behind the project: school superintendent Cecil Lane and local politician Sydney Gimson.
Unlike most at the time, they took a ‘nurture’ rather than a ‘nature’ view of behaviour, believing that the boys in their care had had a difficult start in life, and, if they were treated well, the vast majority of them would go on to lead good lives. Indeed, Gimson claimed on several occasions that almost all their former students kept out of trouble on leaving Desford.
They would have understood the words of Phil Ochs in his song There But For Fortune three decades later:
I’ll show you a young man with so many reasons why There but for fortune go you or I
Chess played an important part in life at Desford, and was greatly valued within the school. It’s fashionable these days to promote chess in schools for its perceived extrinsic benefits, both cognitive and social, and there is also much great work being done promoting chess in prisons throughout the world. Lane and Gimson, you might think, were 90 years or so ahead of their time.
You can see how it might work, can’t you? At one level chess, along with similar games, is an exercise in decision making. If you want to make good decisions, in chess or in life, you have to control your impulses, consider your options, think about the effect of your choice on other people, and work out what might happen next.
If you make good decisions when you’re playing chess you’ll win your games. If not, you’ll lose your games. If you make poor decisions in life you might end up in Approved School or in prison.
The régime in Desford was, as you saw in my previous article, very enlightened for its time, and, in some respects, enlightened even by today’s standards. The chess reports usually only gave the initials of the players, but in some cases we can find their first names from elsewhere, especially for those boys who reached the finals of the school’s annual boxing championship.
If they have distinctive names it’s possible, through sources such as censuses, electoral rolls, birth, marriage and death records and newspaper archives, to find out more about their circumstances and their lives after Desford.
Take, for example, Victor Bernard Duffin, who played in the senior section of the 1933-34 Leicestershire Boys’ Championships.
Victor was the younger of two brothers from a seemingly respectable family from Biggleswade, born in 1917. Their father was a market gardener and seed merchant who hit financial problems and was declared bankrupt in 1920. On leaving Desford, Victor got a job as an assistant school caretaker in Leicester, but he was one of those who didn’t keep out of trouble.
Leicester Evening Mail 15 May 1935
In 1939 he married in Portsmouth, suggesting a possible Naval connection, with a daughter and a son being born there in 1942 and 1948. There’s also a record of an Army Cadet named Victor Bernard Duffin becoming a 2nd Lieutenant in the Artillery in 1945. Would he have been too old to have been a cadet?
After the war he became the landlord of a pub near Peterborough, remarrying in 1957. Although he was respected within his trade, becoming secretary of the Licensed Victuallers Association (I’d guess the local branch) he had further brushes with the law. He was fined for a parking offence in 1961, and, rather unluckily, for driving a car without insurance in 1956. (His team were returning from a dominoes match and he took over the wheel when his teammate felt unwell. Unused to the controls, he was stopped for driving unsteadily. He wasn’t insured for driving his friend’s vehicle: he was fined for driving without the correct insurance, and she was fined for allowing her car to be driven by an uninsured driver.) On another occasion in 1956 he was on the other side, when a customer in his pub paid for his drinks with a Bank of Funland fiver bought from a joke shop.
Victor died in 1983 at the age of 66. His brother Clifford also married twice, on both occasions to women named Doris. His second marriage took place in Market Harborough: Doris Mabel Plant was my 4th cousin once removed!
Another player we can identify from the same tournament is James Ralph Ramft. The Ramft family were originally from Germany but had been living in south east London for some time. There’s no obvious birth record for James, but this article seems to provide a clue.
Kentish Independent 08 April 1921
It seems that he was born in 1919, so he was probably one of the two other illegitimate children mentioned here.
We pick him up in Desford at the end of 1928, taking part in the boxing tournament, so he’d been there some time. It’s possible he was taken in because his parents were unable to care for him rather than because of any criminal offence.
He made the papers through one of his chess games: two pieces down against the eventual winner, Keith Dear, he gave up his rook for a pretty stalemate.
It appears he returned to London, marrying a German girl in Woolwich in 1952 and moving to North London, marrying a second time in 1959, and, sadly, dying a few months later at the age of only 41.
What, then, of our titular hero, Eric Harold Patrick? Last time we witnessed him winning the junior section of the Leicestershire Boys Championship in three consecutive years, and then moving on to represent the YMCA in the county league. You’d imagine a bright young man with a successful future ahead.
Unfortunately, this seems not to have been the case. There’s no sign of him in the 1939 Register, and we don’t pick him up again until 1948 when he marries Gladys Green in Northumberland. A son, named Terence after one of his uncles, is born in 1953 (he died, apparently single, in 2006). Nothing further is available until a death record in 1984. Here’s his probate entry.
St Mary’s Hospital Stannington was a mental hospital. You can find a two-part documentary on YouTube here and here.
How long had he been there? Was he there when he married Gladys in 1948? I can’t find any indication that he served in WW2 so he could well have been there most of his life. Were incipient mental health problems responsible for whatever had caused his admission to Desford? What a sad story.
He wasn’t the only Eric playing chess at Desford. There was also Eric Schadendorf.
Leicester Daily Mercury 03 January 1935
A small boy with a long name: I wonder what they would have made of Thirumurugan Thiruchelvam.
Eric, born in 1920, came from what was clearly a troubled family from South London, not very far from the Ramfts. His father, Hugo, was German, but may have been born in Belgium, and may also have had Polish connections. His mother, Pauline, was Polish. Hugo and Pauline went on to have another son, Leo, in 1928, but he died in 1929. Hugo himself died the following year at the age of only 29. Later the same year Pauline remarried: a daughter was born in 1936.
Given these circumstances it’s hardly surprising that young Eric got into trouble. Did his time at Desford help him mend his ways? Did his chess ability (he finished 3rd in the 1934-35 tournament) encourage him to think before he acted? Apparently not.
After his liberation, etc. he married Helena Wilfort, presumably a cousin, in 1940, but was soon in trouble again.
Lewisham Borough News 16 September 1941
Stanley Wilfort was Eric’s uncle – his mother’s brother. The ASC was the Army Service Corps where he was working as a driver. His marriage, not unexpectedly, didn’t last.
At some point he decided to change his name from Schadendorf to Adams, the name of his stepfather, but this didn’t keep him out of trouble.
Lewisham Borough News 04 July 1950
It seems like he finally managed to resolve his problems, settling down with another woman in North London where they brought up a son and a daughter. He died in Islington in 1984 at the age of 63. I can only hope he found some happiness later in life.
After Eric Patrick, the strongest Desford chess player seems to have been Richard Kelsey.
Leicester Evening Mail 06 July 1937
I’m pretty sure he was Richard Albert Kelsey, another Londoner, born in 1923 in Shoreditch, the fifth of seven children, if you believe the official records, of James William and Margaret Kelsey. His father served in the Royal Navy from 1909 to 1921 so wasn’t around much. The 1922 Electoral Roll includes no less than 11 electors in their house in Hoxton. By 1926 there were 12 electors there, including Margaret, but not James. One of them was Richard Albert Langley: it seems a reasonable bet that he was young Richard’s real father, not least because Margaret had already had another Albert. So this was a fairly large and dysfunctional family existing in very cramped conditions.
As far as I can tell, he returned to London on leaving Desford. We have a marriage in Hackney in 1944, another possible marriage in nearby Stepney in 1955 (no children from either marriage), and a death record in 1967 at the age of only 44.
Alan Wann, born in 1921, was a local boy from a working-class Leicester family who represented Desford in both the junior tournament and the league in the 1935-36 season. His later life wasn’t blameless. In 1947 he and his father were fined for stealing mushrooms from a field. In 1948 he was cited in the divorce courts when he was having an affair with a married woman. She was granted a decree nisi, later marrying Alan and having a large family. In 1958 he was fined for failing to pay his National Insurance contribution. He died in 1994: a relatively long life by the standards of the other Desford chess players.
Norman Reginald Bass (1925-1997) was only 11 when he first played in the county junior championships. He competed the following year as well, and was still in Desford at the time of the 1939 Register and taking part in the boxing in January 1940 before returning to York. Like so many of the Desford chess players he married twice, fathering six daughters.
D Bursey, who played in the 1936-37 championship, must have been Dennis Roy Bursey, born 1922 in Enfield, North London. His background was very different to that of most of the other Desford boys. His father had earlier served in the Navy, on at least one of the same ships as James William Kelsey, but by the time Dennis was born he seems to have been some sort of travelling salesman with family connections to both Canada and Australia. Returning to London after his time in the Approved School, it looks like he married three times, in 1944, 1974 and finally in 1985, shortly before his death the following year. It’s disturbing to notice how many of these boys married more than once, in times when divorce was a lot less common than it is today.
There can be few who had a less propitious start in life than Hubert Michael Cookland, as he later came to be known, but that didn’t stop him playing chess successfully at Desford.
The circumstances of his birth sound like an episode of Long Lost Family.
Liverpool Echo 04 November 1924
Given that sort of background it was perhaps unsurprising that he got into trouble, and also impressive that, in 1938, he was a good enough chess player to share third place in the younger section of the Leicestershire Junior Chess Championships, won, you might recall, by Miss Betty Ferrar. He was also a boxer, competing in the featherweight class at his school boxing championships the following year.
On release from Desford, Hubert took a job on a poultry farm, but, by the end of 1941, was again in trouble with the law. With the help of an accomplice, another former Desford boy, he took to stealing his employer’s hens and selling them to a chap he met in the pub. He was sentenced to six months imprisonment, and it was recommended that he should join the Navy on his release.
From Tracy Wilkins’ family tree on ancestry.co.uk
This is what he did, enlisting in the Merchant Navy, serving on the Arctic convoys in 1944. On leaving the Merchant Navy he returned to York, where he’d been brought up, taking a job as a driver, marrying in 1946, and bringing up two sons and a daughter. He later started working in the building trade, eventually becoming a building contracts manager. Hubert was in trouble again in 1957, for driving the wrong way down a one-way street, causing an accident in which a cyclist sustained serious injuries.
In spite of a difficult upbringing, Hubert Cookland seems to have made good in the end. Some of his story has been told by his granddaughter on an online family tree. He died in 1997 at the age of 75. I’d like to think he maintained his interest in chess, perhaps teaching his children and grandchildren.
Another Desford competitor in the 1938 tournament was Bernard Hugh Tedman, also born in 1924. Bernard, who came from South London, was another boy with a difficult family background. His father Bert, who had spent time in the workhouse as a boy, seems to have had at least six relationships as well as many different jobs. In 1919, after war service in the Royal Garrison Artillery, he was sent down for bigamy, the judge being Llewellyn Atherley-Jones, who was also a pretty strong chess player. Bernard may or may not have been the youngest of his many children.
There’s not very much more to be said: like Eric Patrick, Bernard developed mental health problems, dying at the age of 50 (his death record incorrectly gives his year of birth as 1927) in Warlingham Park Hospital, which, coincidentally or not, was where his father had been working at the time of the 1921 census. The above link demonstrates that draughts was popular there: maybe Bernard played. It took several years for his next of kin to be contacted for probate purposes.
One of Desford’s Leicestershire League players was C Mandley, more likely to by Cyril Ernest (born 1923) than his slightly older brother Charles Albert (born 1922). They were the second and third children of a large family from Northampton.
Cyril seemed to get into minor trouble at various times of his life. By 1939, he would have left Desford, but was now in another Approved School in Norfolk. After the war he settled down, fathering two daughters (I can’t find a marriage record, though). In 1947 he was fined for speeding, and in 1951 he was found guilty of stealing some scrap metal.
Reading some of these stories, you wonder whether Sydney Gimson’s frequent claim of a 90% success rate stood up. You might also have increased sympathy with his view that boys should have continued to stay at Desford until 16 rather than 15: that extra year, he thought, was all-important and he may well have been right. Although some of the Desford chess players eventually made good, we see a frequent pattern of re-offending, marital problems and mental health issues, and several premature deaths. While I’m all in favour of treating young people with kindness, perhaps today we might take a more nuanced approach.
If I travelled down the road to Feltham Young Offenders’ Centre, for example (it was Feltham Borstal when my father was an instructor there back in 1950, so we’re talking about more serious offenders) I’m sure I’d find young men from difficult family backgrounds, just as Cecil Lane and Sydney Gimson did at Desford. But I’d also find young men who might be diagnosed with learning difficulties or with conditions such as ADHD. I’d find young men who had problems with drink and drugs. Everyone is different and needs a different type of support. I’ve been thinking for years I should contact them to ask if they had any interest in chess.
But I have two more Desford stories to tell.
This report of the 1936 boxing tournament gives you some idea of how popular this annual event was in Leicester life at the time.
Leicester Evening Mail 06 January 1936
Look in particular at the cruiserweight result. Charles Elliman and Frederick Holbrooke. Charlie and Fred to their friends. Big boys for their age as well.
They were both chess players as well as boxers. While Charles was, at least on this occasion, the better boxer, Frederick was probably the better chess player. At the same time of year both boys were playing in the junior section of the Leicestershire Boys Championship. Frederick reached the final play-off before losing to Eric Patrick, while Charles was eliminated at an earlier stage.
They were teammates as well as rivals over the chessboard: they were both successful, as was Richard Kelsey, in this match. (Misspellings were very common in this context – misreading handwriting I guess.)
Leicester Daily Mercury 19 February 1936
Both boys also excelled at other sports. In the schools athletics championship that summer term, Frederick was second in the long jump while Charles was second in the 440 yards. In the schools swimming competition the previous September, Charles and Frederick had finished 2nd and 3rd behind Alan Wann in the Junior Speed Race, helping Desford to win the Ansell Trophy (any relation to Sydney Ansell Gimson?) for the third year in succession.
To find out who Frederick Henderson Robert Holbrooke was, let me take you to St Michael’s Church, Pimlico, in the year 1921. His name sounds rather posh, doesn’t it? And St Michael’s Church, in Belgravia, near Victoria Station, is one of London’s most exclusive areas.
Here’s a marriage certificate.
We can identify Nellie Gertrude Skipper, who came from Norfolk. However, I can find no birth record or previous marriage for Frederick George Holbrooke, nor any farmer named Robert Holbrooke.
42 Chester Terrace is presumably 42 Chester Square, immediately opposite the church, which, in 1921, was a boarding house, although there was only one boarder there in that year’s census.
It seems highly likely to me that Frederick George Holbrooke was not his real name. Perhaps, given his son’s name, he was really Henderson. Who knows? Nellie, already the mother of an illegitimate son, returned to Norfolk where Frederick junior was born a few months – or perhaps even weeks – later. Frederick senior disappeared from view until the first quarter of 1963, when his death was recorded in North East Surrey: he was buried in Merton.
Over the next two decades Nellie had several other relationships and several other children, so here, again, was a boy from a highly dysfunctional family. Again, it’s of interest that someone from that background could become a good chess player.
He would probably have left Desford in Summer 1936, and two years later he enlisted in the Royal Artillery, serving as a gunner. The following year, my father would also enlist in the Royal Artillery, seeing service in North Africa, Italy and Germany. Frederick, unlike my father, was unlucky. Killed in action in Tunisia on 3 March 1943, the reports said. He is remembered on the Medjez-el-Bab Memorial in Tunisia, and also on the War Memorial in the Norfolk village of Marsham.
Finally, we have Frederick’s friend, Charles Elleman. Charles was from Birmingham, the 6th of 15 children. The 1921 census records their mother at home with 5 children (Charles would arrive later that year) while their father was in Warwick serving with the Warwickshire Yeomanry Defence Force. In 1933, one of his older brothers was sent to prison after a series of thefts, his father also receiving a custodial sentence for receiving stolen goods. It would have been about this time that Charles was admitted to Desford Approved School.
Although he wasn’t one of their strongest chess players, he took part in competitions and, in the 1936 prizegiving, won the Victor Ludorum trophy for his sporting successes. He also won the prize for the most public spirited boy in the school. Here he is, on the left, being chaired by his fellow pupils.
Leicester Daily Mercury 07 July 1936
At this point Charles, like Frederick, would have left Desford to seek employment. The 1939 Register found him working as a waiter at the Grosvenor Hotel in Heysham, Morecambe. But, like the public spirited young man he was, he chose to serve his country when war was declared. It wasn’t the Army or the Navy for him, but the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve.
He returned to Birmingham in 1942 to marry Lillian Florence Hands, in a break from his job as a wireless operator in 138 Squadron Bomber Command. On 27 November 1944 his Stirling IV was shot down off the coast of Denmark, returning from dropping supplies to the Danish Resistance. Pilot Officer Charles Elleman died as he had lived his life in Desford Approved School, a true hero. A son, Thomas C Elleman, was born in the 4th quarter of 1944: whether before or after his father’s death I don’t know: he married Betty J Astle in Bristol in 1967. There’s an Australian biochemist with a lot of patents to his name called Thomas Charles Elleman: his wife is Betty Jean, so I think this is our man. His father would have been very proud of him, and he must also be very proud of his father.
Charles’s life is commemorated on Panel 211 of the Runnymede Memorial.
Two friends, then, opponents in the boxing ring and on the sports field, both opponents and teammates over the chessboard. Two friends who both lost their lives serving their country and the free world.
In the words of AE Housman:
They carry back bright to the coiner the mintage of man, The lads that will die in their glory and never be old.
These lines of Lord Dunsany also come to mind (British Chess Magazine April 1943).
One art they say is of no use; The mellow evenings spent at chess, The thrill, the triumph, and the truce To every care, are valueless.
And yet, if all whose hopes were set On harming man played chess instead, We should have cities standing yet Which now are dust upon the dead.
Let’s drink a toast, then, to Desford war heroes Frederick Holbrooke and Charles Elleman. To poor Eric Patrick and Bernard Tedman, who ended their lives in mental hospitals. To Victor Duffin and Hubert Cookland, who, after difficult starts, found success and happiness, leaving behind fond memories for their children and grandchildren. To all the other Desford chess players as well. And let’s not forget the two men who made it possible, Cecil Lane and Sydney Gimson.
For those of us involved in junior chess administration, are there lessons we can learn here about the true purpose of chess at secondary school age? Apart from their strongest player, Eric Patrick, who continued for another year, none of them seemed to play any more competitive chess (although Victor was a competitive dominoes player). But perhaps that’s not really the point. Perhaps it brought some happiness to young people who had had a troubled start in life, and you shouldn’t expect any more than that.
If you were hoping to see some chess moves in this article, I can only apologise. I’ll introduce you to some Leicester chess players with longer careers in future Minor Pieces.
Acknowledgements and sources:
ancestry.co.uk
findmypast.co.uk/British Newspaper Archive
Wikipedia
YouTube
Bethlem Museum of the Mind website
Special Forces Roll of Honour website
For a few years in the mid 1930s a remarkable story was playing out in Leicestershire chess. The boys from Desford Approved School, who had been sent there from all over the country having fallen foul of the law, were taking part in the Under 16 section of the county chess championship, dominating the event, winning game after game against their law-abiding contemporaries, and even beating adult teams in the county league.
I wanted to find out more about the lives of some of the Desford boys (the titular Eric was their star player), and about the men who chose to promote chess as an activity for these boys from troubled backgrounds. This article looks mainly at the latter: a future article will consider the former.
First, a bit of history. The Leicester Industrial School for Boys, Desford opened in January 1881. Boys were sent there for all sorts of reasons: some had been in trouble, some were destitute and wandering the streets, some were living in brothels, some were sent there by their parents because they were out of control at home. While there they would be subject to strict discipline as well as learning a trade to help them find employment on their release.
One such boy, beyond his father’s control, was Tom Harry James, who was there from January 1904, when he was 12 years old, until October 1907. His father was expected to pay his expenses, but seemed reluctant to do so.
Leicester Chronicle 22 October 1904
The young miscreant would live a long and colourful life, dying in Yakima, Washington in 1980, but that’s a story for another time and place. How do I know this? Tom Harry James was one of my father’s half brothers. Tom Harry senior and his first wife had twelve children, and after she died he remarried, producing another six children. My father, Howard James, the youngest of them, was born in 1919.
It was now January 1917, and time for a new chairman to be appointed to Desford Industrial School. The man elected was Sydney Ansell Gimson (it’s pronounced Jimson), a local councillor representing the Liberal Party and a member of a prominent Leicester family.
In 1842, Josiah Gimson and his brother Benjamin started an engineering firm in Leicester. Josiah was a man of progressive views: a supporter of Robert Owen‘s socialist ideas and a secularist, founding the Leicester Secular Society, which is still active today. Sydney, born in 1860, was the oldest son of Josiah’s second marriage, and, although he was also sympathetic towards his mother’s unitarian views, played an important role in the Secular Society. At first, he was anti-union, however, being more interested in the concept of the individual, but seems to have changed his opinion later in life. He worked for some time in the family business, but, not needing the money, retired early in order to devote the remainder of his life to public service.
Here’s Sydney, photographed in 1904.
From The Who’s Who of Radical Leicester (Ned Newitt)
You can read more about both Josiah and Sydney in Ned Newitt’s Who’s Who of Radical Leicester here, and about the family business here (Wiki) and here (Story of Leicester).
Some of his brothers were also of interest. His older half-brother, Josiah Mentor Gimson, also worked for his father. One of JM Gimson’s sons, Christopher, played first class cricket for Cambridge University in 1908, and again for Leicestershire in 1921 when on extended leave from the Indian Civil Service. His 1975 obituary in Wisden described him as ‘an attacking batsman and a fine outfield’. Another of his sons, David, was the first chairman of the Leicestershire Contract Bridge Association on its formation in 1946. A competition for a trophy bearing his name was competed for at least up to 2019.
The most important member of the family, though, was Sydney’s younger brother Ernest William Gimson. Ernest met William Morris at the Secular Society, and soon joined forces with him, working as a furniture designer and architect, being very much involved in the Arts and Crafts movement. If you’re interested in this sort of thing, you’ll find a lot more of interest via your favourite search engine. If you’ve got £50 to spare you could also buy this book.
The Leicester Secular Society has a feature on the Gimson family here. You might want to follow some of their other links and look around other pages of their website.
Meanwhile, back at Desford Industrial School it was now 1921. There was a vacancy for a new Superintendent. Sydney wanted someone who shared his progressive views on education: the right man for the job was 31 year old Cecil John Wagstaff Lane, the son of a farmer and innkeeper from Melton Mowbray, who was already working there as the Chief Assistant. The 1921 census found him settled in with his wife Dora and daughter Joan, along with other staff members and more than 200 boys from all over the country. As well as boys from Leicester, many of them were from other parts of the Midlands, London and Yorkshire, especially Hull. By now they would have been sent there by magistrates who would decide to which institution the young offenders up before them should be sent.
Sydney was very much in the ‘nurture’ camp, believing that most of the young offenders were victims of family circumstances, and, if they were treated well, would grow up to lead useful lives and become law-abiding members of society. He found an ally in Cecil Lane, and, despite the 30 year gap in their ages, the two men became firm friends. Cecil introduced a less punitive regime, running Desford along the lines of an English Public School. There were four houses: Red, White, Blue and Green, each with a house master who acted as a surrogate father to the boys. Much emphasis was placed on sport, with regular visits from top class players and competitions against other schools in the area. The most popular sport there was boxing: the school’s annual boxing competition, held over the New Year period, became a big local event, attended enthusiastically by the great and good of Leicester society.
Looking at the newspaper sports columns in the inter-war years it’s notable how popular boxing was, and also how often the professionals fought.
If boxing was the Desford boys’ favourite sport, the other sport which played a very big part in their lives was, perhaps unexpectedly, chess. Cecil Lane and Sydney Gimson don’t appear to have been competitive players themselves, but it’s clear they both enjoyed the game and had the foresight to realise how much it could benefit the boys in their care.
You might think they missed a trick by failing to invent chessboxing, but that’s something we’ll leave aside for now.
By 1925 word was going round that chess was becoming popular within the school.
Leicester Daily Mercury 16 December 1925Leicester Daily Mercury 18 December 1925
Gimson and Lane might not have been club players (and here’s Sydney losing to one of his pupils), but they knew someone who was. Councillor Frederick Chappin, a member of the Conservative Party, was a political opponent of Sydney Gimson, but a friend who not only shared his interest but had been a competitive player in the county league going right back to the 1880s, on at least one occasion playing on board 2 behind none other than the great Henry Ernest Atkins.
By 1927 the boys needed more demanding opposition and county champion Victor Hextall Lovell, Leicester’s strongest player at the time (you’ll meet him in a future Minor Piece) was invited to give a simultaneous display. Lovell’s father was a former Mayor of Leicester and, like Frederick Chappin, a Conservative Councillor.
Leicester Daily Mercury 10 February 1927
Lovell returned during the 1929-30 Christmas holidays, and was emphatic that the standard of play had improved since his previous visit.
Desford School celebrated its jubilee in 1931, and this article outlines some of the changes Lane had made since his appointment as Superintendent.
Leicester Evening Mail 24 February 1931
The 1933 Children and Young Persons Act renamed Industrial Schools as Approved Schools, so Desford was now Desford Approved School. However, the school always preferred to be referred to locally simply as Desford School or Desford Boys’ School to avoid stigmatising the pupils. At this point children could remain there until the age of 16.
As you saw last time, Leicester was a pioneer in junior chess, amongst many other things. In January the first county boys’ championship took place in two sections, which appeared to be Under 18 and Under 16. The Desford boys were keen to take part, six entering in the senior and six in the junior section. Other schools represented were Wyggeston, for many years Leicester’s leading academic secondary school, Alderman Newton, also classified as a ‘Public School’ at the time, City Boys and Moat Road.
Unfortunately it’s not possible to identify all the Desford chess players as only initials and surname were given in the local press. In some cases the boys also took part in the annual boxing tournament, where the press gave their full names. Although the Leicestershire Records Office holds admission records, they are not able to release them due to data protection legislation, and, as we’ve seen, the boys might have come from anywhere in the country. Having an unusual surname was of course helpful.
As you’ll see, the Desford boys were pretty successful in their first competitive outing.
Leicester Daily Mercury 08 January 1934
On a sad note, the winner of the senior section, Keith Dear, died four years later at the age of just 20.
There, winning the junior section and representing Desford (Approved) School, was Eric Harold Patrick, whose life we can reconstruct, although we don’t know why he was there.
He had been born on 23 August 1921 in Cannock, Staffordshire, the oldest of five children of Harold and Lily Patrick, who had married that January when they were both only 19. Shortly after his birth the family moved to Leicester, Lily’s home town. At the time of his success, then, he was only 12 years old, competing against boys who were a year or two older than him, and attending the city’s most prestigious secondary schools.
When Sydney Gimson came to present his annual report to the education committee a few months later, young Eric’s chess success was the item which elicited the most interest.
Leicester Evening Mail 24 April 1934
Gimson also revealed that he had played two games against Eric, both players winning one game.
There was another administrative change. From now on, boys had to leave Desford at 15 rather than 16. Sydney wasn’t impressed, as he told the school prizegiving. For some reason this was reported in the Women’s column of the local paper.
Leicester Evening Mail 03 July 1934
You’ll see that the school only awarded four prizes – and the fewer prizes you award, the more they’ll be valued. The most public spirited boy, the boy who was best at sports, the captain of the winning house – and the best chess player. A demonstration, I think, of the respect in which chess was held at Desford at the time.
By the end of the year it was time for the 1935 edition of the county junior championship. As boys now left Desford at 15 they were only represented in the junior section.
The local newspapers’ sports correspondents were invited along to have a look.
Leicester Daily Mercury 01 January 1935Leicester Daily Mercury 02 January 1935Leicester Chronicle 05 January 1935
There was also a photographer present.
Leicester Daily Mercury 01 January 1935
One paper even sent along their cartoonist: Eric Patrick was one of his subjects.
Leicester Daily Mercury 02 January 1935
The results of the junior section were remarkable. All five of the preliminary sections were won by Desford boys, Eric Patrick retaining his title with a 100% score. Don’t forget that these were young offenders from difficult family backgrounds winning game after game against boys from top academic schools.
Needless to say, Eric again won the school chess prize as well. At the prizegiving, Cecil Lane blamed poor housing and large families on the boys’ problems.
Leicester Daily Mercury 02 July 1935
Later that year, the school entered a team into the third division of the Leicestershire Chess League, where they were playing against adult club teams as well as other school teams.
By December they were in second place, having won two and drawn one of their first three matches.
Leicester Daily Mercury 05 December 1935
As the New Year approached, the county boys’ championships came round again. As in the previous year, seven Desford boys took part in the junior section, with Eric Patrick aiming for his third successive title. This time they didn’t have it all their own way, with only two of their players, including Eric, making the final four. He even lost a game in the final pool before regaining the Silver Rook.
Again, we have a photograph.
Leicester Daily Mercury 31 December 1935
Leicester Daily Mercury 22 April 1936
The school team continued to do well in the league. In these two matches they beat the early league leaders (Alfred Urban Busby was a more than useful player, beating Alekhine in a 1936 simul and, in 1989, a year before his death, losing a postal game to Richmond & Twickenham Chess Club’s Michael Franklin), with the aid of two defaults, but lost to the second team from the Cripples Guild.
Here are the final league tables, with King Richard’s Road defaulting two matches. If their two opponents were awarded 6-0 victories, that would leave Desford Boys sharing second place.
Leicester Evening Mail 20 May 1936
Eric Patrick was now 15, and would have left Desford School that summer to make his way in the world. He continued playing chess, now representing YMCA in the league, and taking part in the senior section of the junior championships at the end of the year.
There was also a change in the Leicestershire League: they decided to run a separate schools division rather than allowing them to play against the adult clubs. For whatever reason, I don’t know, and, again for whatever reason, Desford didn’t enter the league for the 1936-37 season.
In the 1936-37 boys’ championships, Eric Patrick reached the final pool of the senior section but didn’t quite manage to win the title. The best Desford player in the junior section was Richard Kelsey, who finished in second place.
But the school would soon be hit by tragedy.
Cecil Lane’s wife Dora had died in April 1936. He needed some domestic help and his friend Sydney knew just the right person. Sydney had two sons, Basil and Humphrey. Basil was married to Alice Muriel Goodman: whose relation Nora would be ideal for the job.
Nora soon became rather more than a housekeeper, and, in September 1937, she and Cecil became man and wife.
Leicester Daily Mercury 09 September 1937
As Mr RT Goodman had died more than a year before Nora was born, I suspect that the older lady in the photograph may have been her grandmother, not her mother, and that Nora was actually the illegitimate daughter of Alice’s sister Winifred. Was she aware?
And was Cecil aware that his brother Roderick died in hospital on the same day?
Anyway, the newly wed couple headed off to Scotland for their honeymoon. While there, Cecil was taken ill At first he seemed to be recovering, but then he took a turn for the worse, and, only 11 days after their marriage, Nora was left a widow.
Leicester Daily Mercury 21 September 1937
Desford were still well represented in the younger section of the 1937-38 edition of the county junior championship (now no longer ‘Boys’ following the entry of Betty and Joan Ferrar, whom you met last time), with Hubert Cookland reaching the final pool and Norman Bass just missing out after a play-off.
There was more sad news on 4 November 1938, with the death of Sydney Ansell Gimson at the age of 78. The Leicester Mercury described him as a ‘Noted Leicester Rationalist and Public Man’.
That, sadly, seems to have been the end of competitive chess at Desford Approved School. They appear not to have been represented in the 1938-39 county junior championships. Cecil and Sydney’s successors, I presume, didn’t share their interest in chess. Then, of course, war intervened. Some of the boys and young men who had been engaged in friendly combat over the chessboard, or, at least in the case of the Desford pupils, in the boxing ring, would soon be drawn into a very different fight: the fight against Fascism.
Join me again soon to find out what happened to Eric Harold Patrick and his chess playing friends after they left Desford.
But first, perhaps you’ll join me in drinking a toast to Cecil John Wagstaff Lane and Sydney Ansell Gimson, two men who, for their time, or even for our time, held enlightened and progressive views on education, and believed, as I do, that chess can have enormous social benefits for children of secondary school age.
I’d like to end on a personal note. Of all the people I’ve written about in these Minor Pieces, I think Sydney is the one I’d most like to have met. He seems to have been a man who shared my own opinions, interests and values in almost every respect. My political and religious views are, considering the 90 year gap in our ages, very similar to his. I also share his interests in the environment and in education, particularly in how schools should go about helping disadvantaged children, and in how chess can be used for that purpose. Sydney Ansell Gimson, you are one of my heroes.
Sources and Acknowledgements:
ancestry.co.uk
findmypast.co.uk/British Newspaper Library
Wikipedia
Who’s Who of Radical Leicester (Ned Newitt)
William Morris Society website
Leicester Secular Society website
Story of Leicester website
University of Leicester website
“Have you ever wondered why strong chess players immediately grasp what is happening in complex positions? The secret is pawn structures. The pawn structure dictates the game’s flow, and different structures require distinct approaches. You can improve your game by studying a large variety of pawn structures and the Hidden Laws of Chess.
IM Nick Maatman invented the Hidden Laws of Chess as an instructional tool to help his students bridge the gap between the basic understanding of a club player and the next level of knowledge of Masters and Grandmasters. A grandmaster knows from experience what pieces to exchange when facing an isolated pawn, while a club player wonders if he should keep his rooks on the board – or not.
The Hidden Laws go one level deeper than the basic laws on piece development, king safety or material balance. The Hidden Laws will uncover elements such as space, the quality of a pawn structure, and a doubled pawn’s strength or weakness. Maatman will answer questions like: Are backward pawns the worst in chess? What is the value of a space advantage? Could doubled pawns be an asset? How can I win symmetrical positions?
Using his coaching experience and writing with a touch of science and philosophy, Maatman will guide any ambitious chess player to the next level. His book contains dozens of actionable tips, instructive games and carefully selected exercises.
“Nick Maatman (1995) is an International Master, experienced chess coach, and training partner of Super-GM Jorden van Foreest. Maatman has won the Dutch U20 Championship and has beaten many strong grandmasters in tournament games. The Hidden Laws of Chess is his first book, but he expects many more to follow. He graduated from Groningen University in both Business and Philosophy.”
From the author’s introduction:
What is a Hidden Law in chess? With a ‘Hidden Law’, I refer to the deeper structures that spring from a mere contingency of the rules of chess. This might sound like a mouthful of gibberish to you. What I mean is that there are certain patterns that underlie good play. Had the rules of chess been different, these hidden structures would have been different as well. On a surface level, there are Laws that comprise the comparative value of the pieces. On a deeper level there are Hidden Laws that encompass elements such as the importance of space, the quality of a pawn structure, the strength or weakness of an isolated pawn, the importance of a key square, etc.
… and …
.. the Hidden Laws are context dependent. Good chess strategy may vary immensely in different types of positions. That’s why this book is divided into eight chapters featuring eight different types or aspects of pawn structures.
In this book, my objective is to explore these Hidden Laws of Chess. My goal is … to provide actionable tips and ideas that you can apply to elevate your game. Ideas that form the foundation for a solid positional understanding. A mastery of the Hidden Laws of Chess contributes to sound judgment – and sound judgment leads to good moves, which ultimately leads to better results.
So what we have here is, according to the author, essentially a positional book covering eight different types of pawn formation. He suggests that combining reading this book with tactics training will enable you to make progress with your chess.
The eight chapters cover in turn: space advantage, doubled pawns, backward pawn, isolani, hanging pawns, mobile pawn centre, locked pawn centre, symmetry.
Each chapter is, as with many books from this publisher, preceded by some puzzles (Preview Exercises) taken from games analysed within the chapter, and followed by a Quiz reinforcing the lessons learnt in the chapter. The difficulty of the puzzles is indicated using a star system: one star for the easiest through to five stars for the hardest. The solutions to the quiz questions are to be found at the end of the book. Helpfully, important sentences are highlighted throughout, and each chapter concludes with the author’s Hidden Laws concerning that particular pawn formation.
Of course it’s a lot harder to set meaningful position exercises than tactical exercises. I was interested to see how Maatman dealt with this.
As this is a relatively slim volume, the chapters themselves are fairly short, mostly 20-25 pages excluding the puzzles, although the chapter on isolani is slightly longer.
The main question I always have with instructional books such as this concerns the target market. There is, or should be, an enormous difference between books written for 1500s and books written for 2000s, and again between books written for 2000s and books written for 2500s. Books written for, say, 1750s or 2250s will, or again should be, rather different again. The danger for authors and publishers is that if your book is too specific you’ll limit your target market, while if you try to offer something for everyone you’ll and up pleasing nobody.
Again, I was interested to see how this book approached these issues. Neither the publisher’s blurb nor the author’s introduction give any indication as to the approximate rating range of the book.
I turned to Chapter 2, as my view for many years has been that doubled pawns are, by and large, not dealt with very well in chess literature. Have there been any books specifically devoted to this subject? If not, someone, perhaps Nick Maatman, should certainly write one.
Maatman does a good job, given that he only has twenty pages, in explaining the potential advantages, as well as the disadvantages of doubled pawns. We get a few classic examples, for example the 1938 Botvinnik – Chekover game, which made a big impression on me when I first came across it in about 1970. We also get some recent games, for example Caruana – Carlsen (Wijk aan Zee 2015), in which the doubled pawns were only on the board for a few moves. I can’t help thinking the game was selected for the fascinating tactical possibilities both in the game and in the notes, rather than because it was particularly instructive in helping the reader to understand the subject. I’m not sure how games like this fit it with the author’s claim that the book is more of a positional manual.
The Hidden Laws of Doubled Pawns at the end of the chapter include, amongst others:
Having fewer pawn islands is favourable
Isolated doubled pawns are particularly vulnerable
A doubled pawn can create a semi-open file.
Could these rules really be considered Hidden? While they’re all very useful, I’d have thought that most club standard players, even 1500 standard players, would be aware of them.
The pattern is repeated through all the chapters. You’ll find some classic games which will be very familiar to most 2000 strength players, but new to less experienced players, along with more complex contemporary games often featuring interesting tactics. Of course there’s a generational issue. While I’m very familiar with many of the older games and less familiar with the 21st century examples, younger readers may well have the opposite experience.
As well as questions at the beginning and end of the chapter, there are questions in the text as well.
Take this example from Chapter 3 (Backward Pawns), where the author’s friend Jorden van Foreest is facing Nigel Short at Malmo in 2021, about to play his 12th move.
Try to put yourself in White’s shoes for a moment. You have prepared the game all the way to move 10. Now, you realise that your opponent played a move that wasn’t in your notes, suggesting it may be inferior. How would you try to take advantage.
12. Bxb6!!
I was truly impressed when I witnessed this move. In Chapter 2, we learned about the weaknesses of doubled pawns and how they can be especially problematic if their presence creates multiple pawn islands. Furthermore, you probably knew something about the value of the bishop pair already. Here, Van Foreest throws all conventional wisdom out of the window. He voluntarily gives up a great bishop for a shabby-looking knight on b6, and on top of that he repairs the black pawn structure. What did Van Foreest notice that made him commit to this decision?
It’s all about the pawn that’s left behind on d7 and the gaping hole this creates on d6, Van Foreest accurately assesses that the creation of a backward pawn outweighs all other factors in this position.
Well, you might perhaps have guessed the answer given that the chapter features backward rather than doubled pawns, but active learning, forcing you to think for yourself, is always good.
It’s all about trading advantages, isn’t it? A complex and difficult topic which could do with a book to itself. Here, a vastly experienced former World Championship Candidate misjudged the position. If it was too hard for Nigel, what hope do the rest of us have?
There’s always a danger when you demonstrate advanced material to your students that they will fail to contextualise the information and go round randomly trading great bishops for shabby-looking knights or straightening out their opponents’ pawn structure. On the other hand, seeing how top GMs make decisions might inspire us to become better players. What do you think?
I think Maasman’s introduction to the chapter on Isolani will be instructive to many readers. He offers two positions, both with White to move, and asks which you’d prefer.
and
Which position would you prefer?
In fact, it’s the first position that offers White more winning chances: Rd4! gives a clear advantage. The second position is optically very good for White but Black can hold comfortably as long as he finds 1. Bd1 Bd7!.
Maatman proposes two Hidden Laws:
When playing against an isolated queen’s pawn, the preservation of major pieces increases winning chances
and
When playing against an isolated queen’s pawn, the exchange of minor pieces increases winning chances.
According to the author: These laws are very specific and there is a good chance that you haven’t heard them before.
Actually, I had heard them before, in a book written for children published in the 1980s (I prefer not to name the title and author), which demonstrated the 9th game of the 1981 Karpov – Korchnoi World Championship Match – the same game which, in this book, provides three of the quiz questions at the end of this chapter.
I’d guess, though, that this will be new to most players of, say, 1500 strength, but might well be known to many 2000 strength players.
If you play the King’s Indian Defence or anything similar with either colour, you’ll certainly enjoy Chapter 7 on Locked Pawn Centres, but if you prefer the French Defence, for example, you might be disappointed.
One of the games demonstrated here is a 2022 computer game between versions of Stockfish and Scorpio.
In this position Stockfish has to choose it’s 23rd move. What would your plan be here?
Stockfish found 23. c5!!, with the idea of meeting bxc5 with Nc1, with a later Bb5 to follow, trading off White’s bad bishop for Black’s good bishop.
Maatman comments after the game:
An enthralling concept by Stockfish. The move 23. c5!! is just so captivating. Extraordinary imagination is needed to even consider such an idea. White’s only path forward appears to be on the dark squares, but the machine completely forfeits the dark squares. Instead it contests the light squares at the cost of a pawn. Eventually, the black a-pawn was lost, and its White counterpart promoted. Outstanding foresight by the machine.
The famous evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins once remarked: ‘Personally, I rather look forward to a computer program winning the World Chess Championship. Humanity needs a lesson in humility.’ The times that humans were able to compete with computers have long gone, but the above game showcases that computers now have our number in any position.
I found the idea of puzzles both before and after each chapter rather confusing. Yes, like all good teachers, Maatman likes to offer his students a way of testing their understanding of the contents of the lesson. And yes, it’s this publisher’s house style to include preview puzzles at the start of each chapter to draw you in. I’m not convinced, though, that having both types of puzzle works. In an instructional book you’re assuming the reader isn’t very familiar with the study material, which makes me rather sceptical of the value of the preview puzzles here.
You also have to be careful that your quizzes at the end of the lesson are testing genuine understanding rather than just memory. To give you an example, one of the Hidden Laws in Chapter 1 states that, if you’re playing against a Hedgehog formation you should consider a2-a4-a5. (I don’t think I’ve ever played against a pure Hedgehog in my very long chess career, but that’s another issue.) In the quiz there’s a position from a Hedgehog in which White has a pawn on a4. It’s given four stars for difficulty, but once you’re read the chapter you’ll play the move automatically.
You’ll find a lot of useful instruction throughout this book, and I found the highlighted sentences an excellent way of getting the most important points across. Maatman is an engaging writer and a great communicator with a friendly style, occasionally digressing into football or philosophy, but never overdoing the jollity. He’s chosen an important and underestimated topic: many club players would do well to study pawn formations rather than just memorising openings. Players of all standards will enjoy and learn something here.
While I appreciate that publishers want to aim their books at as wide a readership as possible, I can’t help feeling that less experienced players would benefit from more concrete examples rather than games decided by complex tactics, while more experienced players would value more detail and depth, more pages and even more volumes, along with some less familiar examples.
As is to be expected from this publisher, the book is attractively produced. If you like the idea you won’t be disappointed, but while everyone will learn something, many would learn more from a book focussed on their specific needs.
Richard James, Twickenham 30th June 2023
. Richard James
Book Details:
Softcover: 256 pages
Publisher: New in Chess; 1st edition (31 Jan. 2023)
Last time I looked at the popularity of chess amongst the residents of the Star and Garter Home for Disabled Ex-Servicemen in Richmond in the 1930s.
Richmond wasn’t the only place in which those with physical handicaps were encouraged to play chess. It’s time to return to the city of Leicester, which, you may recall, was my father’s home city, and also where I studied between 1968 and 1972. In fact my parents’ families were both from the Midlands, crisscrossing the counties of Warwickshire, Leicestershire and Northamptonshire, and occasionally bumping into each other in places like Coventry and Leicester.
The Leicester Guild of Cripples was founded in 1898, providing services for the physically handicapped of the city. Between 1925 and 1991 they ran a holiday home in the nearby village of Cropston. Of course, along with other terms for disabilities which became playground insults, we can no longer use the word ‘cripple’ in that context today. They later became the Leicester Guild of the Physically Handicapped and in 2000 changed their name to MOSAIC 1898 where they now cater for those with a wider range of disabilities.
You can visit their website here and watch a 1934 home movie about the Guild here.
We’ll now turn the clock back to 1930 and meet a remarkable man named Leonard Inskip. Leonard, born in 1885 was one of a large family. His father, William John Inskip, was an influential trade unionist working, like very many in Leicester, in the bootmaking trade. He became a local councillor, alderman and magistrate, but was also antisemitic, campaigning against Jewish shoemakers. He merits a Wikipedia page here, and you can also read about him on Ned Newitt’s essential The Who’s Who of Radical Leicester website here.
Leonard, despite his physical handicap, was an enterprising chap. In 1930 he founded a magazine called The Cripples’ Journal, and sent copies of the first issue to newspapers up and down the country.
Leicester Daily Mercury 23 June 1930
Biddulph Street, to the east of the city centre, has been split into four sections with different names so it’s not possible to identify the exact house where Leonard lived, but it would probably have been somewhere around here. A completely different world from the suburban mansions where you’d find the civil servants, bankers and insurance executives who played chess in leafy Richmond and Twickenham.
Leonard had a particular interest in sports, and just like the residents of the Star and Garter, believed that those who weren’t able to access physical sports should be encouraged to take part in mental sports.
He therefore wrote to the local paper suggesting a social club where he and his fellow guild members could play friendly games of draughts, chess and billiards against members of other social clubs in the city.
Leicester Daily Mercury 18 July 1930
The authorities, as you see, weren’t sympathetic. Most of the cripples were women and children and the men, if they wanted, could go and join another club. However, Leonard received letters of support, and it wasn’t long before the Cripples Guild played their first chess match.
Leicester Evening Mail 27 November 1930
I haven’t been able to identify F Weston: there were quite a few gentlemen named Frank Weston or Frederick Weston living in Leicester at the time, none of whom had an obvious physical handicap. He had previously played for the Victoria Road club and was a fairly strong club and county player. It could be that he came along to help and support them, and perhaps provide some instruction.
His opponent here, Arthur Clement Bannister (1891-1982) was, in 1921, an engineer. His father James, who had been born in Earl Shilton, was the manager of a hosiery company. His sister Laura would later marry High Court Judge Sir Donald Hurst. James’s father and grandfather were both named Stephen. His grandfather was apparently born in Earl Shilton in about 1788 but I haven’t been able to find a parish baptism record. However, I know a lot about other Earl Shilton Bannisters, notably my great grandmother (mother’s mother’s mother) Louisa Bannister, who was born there in 1854. I can (speculatively) trace Louisa back to John Bannister, the son of David, born in Earl Shilton in 1714, which, if we’re both correct, makes me the 7th cousin of antique chess set dealer Luke Honey. It’s also a reasonable guess that Arthur Clement came from the same family, so we may share a common ancestor somewhere along the line.
I haven’t been able to find a record of another match until two years later.
Leicester Evening Mail 09 November 1932
Some of the surnames there will be familiar to anyone researching Leicester genealogy. Names like Freestone, Gilbert, Pratt and Dakin come up over and over again.
Here we have a team of seven players scoring a convincing victory over British United, manufactures of shoe machinery and for many years one of Leicester’s biggest employers.
On board six was the Secretary of the Cripples Guild, Michael Stanley Woodward Ferrar, usually known simply as Stanley Ferrar.
Stanley was born in 1905 in Stamford, Lincolnshire, the youngest of three sons of Walter Ferrar and Annie Woodward. He also had a half-brother, Annie’s son George William Todd Woodward, who would change his surname to Ferrar.
At some point in the 1910s the family moved to Leicester, where Walter died in 1919. The 1921 census finds Annie and her three younger sons at 65 Beaumont Road Leicester. Reginald Walter is a motor driver and John Basil a baker, while Stanley, because of his disability, isn’t at school and has no occupation. George William (using his second name) is back in Lincolnshire, living in his brother-in-law’s pub, along with his wife Maud and their infant son, another Reginald. Like John Basil he’s employed as a baker.
In the autumn of 1933 they played several more friendly matches, and in 1934 applied to join the Leicestershire League, entering a team in the third (lowest) division.
They were pretty successful as well, as you’ll see from the final tables.
Leicester Evening Mail 10 April 1935
The following season saw them promoted to Division 2, while, with so much demand for places in competitive matches, they entered a second team in Division 3. Both teams performed respectably, as you’ll see from the final (there were a few unplayed matches) tables.
Leicester Evening Mail 20 May 1936
On 5 September Stanley Ferrar was selected as one of 40 players to take on the great Alexander Alekhine in a simultaneous display.
Leicester Evening Mail 07 September 1936
You’ll see that he drew his game, and, according to this report, was close to winning.
Leicester Daily Mercury 07 September 1936
(There was some confusion about whether Mr Passant was the fairly well-known AE Passant or his lesser known brother NE Passant, who really should have switched the order of his first names.)
You’ll meet a few of Alekhine’s other opponents in later Minor Pieces.
The next season, though, they were struggling to raise full teams, so they needed some more manpower. Or rather girl power.
Leicester Daily Mercury 24 March 1937
You’ll see that two Misses Ferrar have been recruited to their second team in Division 3.
These are Stanley’s nieces, Norma and Betty, who may well have been the second and third females to take part in the Leicestershire Chess League. You’ll meet their predecessor in a future Minor Piece.
Now there’s some confusion here as he had two nieces named Betty, both living in Leicester. His half-brother, George William’s children were, apart from Reginald whom you met in 1921, Norma (1922), Joan (1924), Betty (1926) and Monica (1928). His brother Reginald Walter’s children were Betty (1924), Neville (1926), Brian (1928), Rita (1931) and Brenda (1933). John Basil had no less than 11 children, but none of them fit it. (Leonard Inskip, married to the delightfully named Alice Lovely, also had a daughter called Betty who would later obtain a BA in Geography at Liverpool University. My mother would have told you how popular the name was in the 1920s.)
So Miss N Ferrar must have been Norma, and I suspect Miss B Ferrar was Reginald Walter’s daughter born in 1924 rather than Norma’s sister born in 1926. Both girls, then, would have been in their teens at the time of these matches. To the best of my knowledge, unlike Uncle Stanley, they were not themselves physically handicapped.
Norma didn’t play very long, but her sister Joan replaced her in the team.
Leicester Daily Mercury 27 October 1937
Leicestershire, a pioneering county in so many ways, had been running a boys’ championship for several years. In January 1938 Betty and Joan applied to take part in the Junior (U16 or thereabouts) section. Their entries were accepted, forcing the organisers to rename their competition as Juniors rather than Boys.
This report suggests that the event was rather chaotic and the standard of play not very high.
Leicester Daily Mercury 05 January 1938
Betty not only won her section, but shared first place in the competition.
Leicester Evening Mail 12 January 1938
Here she is with her co-winner and the trophy.
Leicester Daily Mercury 12 January 1938
The Cripples Guild continued playing in the county league into the 1938-39 season, with Betty and Joan now in the first team, but then war put an end to their chess adventure. A wartime league was established, but they didn’t take part. That, then, is the end of the story. Stanley Ferrar married in 1945, had two children, Graham and Sheila, but died in 1951. Leonard Inskip died in 1955.
Leonard’s name lived on for many years in the Inskip League of Friendship for the Disabled: there were several branches of this charity, mostly, it seems, in Lancashire, some of which survived into the 21st century.
Leonard Inskip and Stanley Ferrar may not have been the world’s greatest players, but they represent to me what chess clubs are really about, providing friendship and community, especially for those who are, in one way or another, handicapped or disadvantaged. I’m sure their friends in the Cripples Guild gained a lot from their league matches and appreciated their efforts. Leonard was clearly a remarkable man, while Stanley, the stronger player of the two, by teaching and encouraging his nieces, became a pioneer and supporter of chess for girls.
Again, we see chess being used to provide competition for those who, through physical handicap or incapacitation, were unable to access physical sport. This wasn’t the only example of chess being used for social purposes. in the inter-war period. I recently came across a photograph of boys from a school for the deaf and dumb in Derby being taught chess. Most remarkable of all was the story of chess at Worcester College for the Blind, which I’ll perhaps explore some other time.
But, still in Leicester in the 1930s, there was another story being played out, promoting competitive chess for another disadvantaged sector of society. You’ll find out more in the next Minor Piece. Don’t miss it.
Sources and Acknowledgements:
ancestry.com
findmypast.com/British Newspaper Archives
Wikipedia
Google Maps
The Who’s Who of Radical Leicester (Ned Newitt)
Inskip One-Name Study
Mosaic 1898 website
Media Archive for Central England (MACE)
“The rivalry between William Steinitz and Johannes Zukertort, the world’s strongest chess players in the late nineteenth century, became so fierce that it was eventually named The Ink War. They fought their battle on the chessboard and in various chess magazines and columns. It was not only about who was the strongest player but also about who had the best ideas on how to play the game. In 1872, Johannes Zukertort moved from Berlin to London to continue his chess career.
Ten years earlier, William Steinitz had moved from Vienna to London for the same purpose; meanwhile, he had become the uncrowned champion of the chess world. Their verbal war culminated in the first match for the World Championship in 1886. Zukertort is certainly the tragic protagonist of this book, but is he also a romantic hero? He has often been depicted as a representative of romantic chess, solely focusing on attacking the king. Steinitz is said to have put an end to this lopsided chess style with his modern scientific school. This compelling story shakes up the traditional version of chess history and answers the question which of them can claim to be the captain of the modern school. With his first book, Move First, Think Later, International Master Willy Hendriks caused a minor revolution in the general view on chess improvement.
His second book, On the Origin of Good Moves, presented a refreshing new outlook on chess history. In The Ink War, Hendriks once again offers his unique perspective in a well-researched story that continues to captivate until the tragic outcome. It gives a wonderful impression of the 19th-century chess world and the birth of modern chess. Hendriks invites the reader to actively think along with the beautiful, instructive and entertaining chess fragments with many chess exercises.”
“Willy Hendriks (1966) is an International Master who has been working as a chess trainer for over thirty years. His bestseller Move First, Think Later won the English Chess Federation Book of the Year Award in 2012. In his much-acclaimed second book, On the Origin of Good Moves, he presented a provocative new view on chess history.”
There are always dichotomies, aren’t there? You only have to look at any news website or paper to see them playing out before your eyes. Passionate people on either side of an argument taking extreme views and unwilling to listen to the other side.
In the world of education, for example, there’s the dichotomy between ‘trad’ and ‘prog’, traditional or progressive values, which has been going on, in one form or another, since the days of Rousseau. (Sensible teachers, of course, know that you need some of both.) The same terms are also used in music: perhaps you’re a fan of prog rock, or a devotee of trad jazz.
Let me take you back now to the musical world of the 1850s and 1860s, specifically to central Europe and, in particular, Germany. There were two groups of composers in opposition in what would later become known as the War of the Romantics. Both groups, in very different ways, saw themselves as heirs to Beethoven. The conservative, traditionalist camp was led by the likes of Brahms and Clara Schumann, while, in the opposite corner, were the progressive modernists such as Wagner and Liszt. Nowadays we have no problems listening to the music of both groups with equal pleasure.
Moving forward a couple of decades we come to a very similar war, which, although the camps were led by Central Europeans, took place mostly in London. The Ink War: Romanticism and Modernity in Chess, the subject of Dutch IM Willy Hendriks’ latest book, features Johannes Zukertort flying the romantic flag while William Steinitz sports the colours of Modernity. Two men with, at least if you believe their writings, very different views about how chess should best be played.
This is a successor to the author’s previous book which I reviewed enthusiastically here. Whereas the previous book took a wide-ranging view of 19th century chess history, here we look in more detail at a period of fourteen years: between Zukertort’s arrival in London in 1872 and the first official world championship match, between Steinitz and Zukertort, in 1886.
In the course of 468 pages we meet not just our two protagonists, but a whole host of colourful characters who enlivened the 19th century London chess scene. While we’re given an in depth look at the games of Steinitz and Zukertort, there are many other games included to put their moves in context. A lot of fascinating history, and also a lot of fascinating chess.
At the time there were very few players making a living out of chess, and, if you wanted to be a professional player, the place to go was London. Steinitz had moved there in 1862, and, not the most likeable of men, soon made enemies. The British Chess Association wanted to put him in his place, and, invited Zukertort, who had just won a match against Anderssen, to London.
As Hendriks relates in his prologue:
This book tells the story of this struggle, which was fought on the chessboard, but also, to a significant extent, in chess magazines and in columns in newspapers. First and foremost, this battle was about who was the strongest, and who could eventually call himself the first World Champion. But there was more at stake. Chess and chess theory were in full development and the ideas about how the game should be played were quite divergent. Steinitz had a very outspoken position and saw himself as the foreman of a scientific modern school. For our story it would be nice if Zukertort represented the other pole, the romantic attacking school, but things are not that simple. The larger public, however, understood the rivalry between the two for the greater part along these lines. Thus, the struggle on and around the chessboard was closely linked to the societal developments of the time, such as the rise of science and technology and the romantic resistance to them.
After introductions to Steinitz and Zukertort, in Chapter 3 Hendriks tackles the question of chess style. This ‘primitive dichotomy’, between tactics and strategy, ‘plays a major role in (traditional) chess history writing.’ ‘The danger of this is that it can easily lead to caricatures’.
Of course these caricatures can be seen in later rivalries as well: Alekhine v Capablanca, Tal v Petrosian, Kasparov v Karpov. The tactician against the strategist.
But, in reality, we’re all just trying to find the best moves.
As you’ll know if you’ve read his previous book, Hendriks takes a different approach, looking at ‘the quantitative changes that led to an increase in chess knowledge and to a higher level of skill’. He’s contextualising the games he demonstrates by looking at what the players would have known from previous experience about the positions on the board.
Here, for example, is Zukertort, just having arrived in London in 1872, playing White against the archetypal tragic/romantic hero Cecil de Vere.
You’ll recognise this as a Sicilian Taimanov, which, almost a century later, would become very popular, but this would have been virgin territory to both players. It’s quite understandable, given what he would have known at the time, that de Vere now blundered with 7… Nge7? (you can play this in similar positions but not here), and likewise impressive that Zukertort found the refutation, Ndb5!, over the board.
In the same event Steinitz and Zukertort met for the first time. Steinitz, playing White, essayed his favourite gambit, based on his belief that the king was a strong piece which could take care of itself.
Here’s the game. Click on any move for a pop-up window.
A strong defensive performance by Steinitz, according to Hendriks, who, understandably, only gives us the first 24 moves. A triumph for materialism over romanticism, you might think. Or equally that Zukertort’s second piece sacrifice on move 12 was tempting but unsound.
Hendriks is at his best discussing the development of both positional and tactical ideas. His contextualisation is both informative and instructive.
In those days the French Defence was considered a dull and even cowardly opening, an opinion which continued well into the 20th century. The justification at the time was that the lines where White plays e5 were considered favourable for Black, so the first player usually chose the Exchange Variation.
In 1875 Zukertort played a match against (the very interesting) William Norwood Potter. In the 10th game they reached this position.
A stark contrast to the Steinitz game above. Zukertort, playing White, saw nothing wrong with winning a pawn: 9. Bxf6 Qxf6 10. Nxd5, but after 10… Qh6 11. h3? Nxd4! he was losing material. The Nxd4 idea is very familiar to most club players today, but back in 1875 it would have been unknown: they would have had to discover it for themselves.
Another idea in this sort of position was for one player to swing the queen’s knight over to the kingside, allowing doubled pawns after a trade on f6. In exchange you get the two bishops and a possible attack down the g-file.
It didn’t work in this game from Paris 1878.
You’ll observe that by no means all the games in this book feature Steinitz or Zukertort.
Chapter 11 is intriguingly titled The discovery of the queenside. In his 1880 match against Samuel Rosenthal, Zukertort switched from his usual Ruy Lopez to the Queen’s Gambit. This was by no means a new opening: it dates back to Greco and de Labourdonnais played it on many occasions against McDonnell. In those days the Queen’s Gambit, like the King’s Gambit was usually accepted: after all accepting gambits was the chivalrous thing to do. Rosenthal preferred to decline Zukertort’s gambit, and, in the 9th match game White was able to carry out his favourite plan of a queenside pawn roller, playing an early c5 followed by advancing his a- and b-pawns.
In the 9th game of the match he reached this position, with White to play.
Any strong player will start by considering Rb6, having seen the idea many times before in games played by the likes of Botvinnik and Petrosian. Stockfish agrees that it’s the best move here. Zukertort saw it but, not having had the advantages we have, mistakenly rejected it, eventually drawing a favourable ending. As Hendriks demonstrates, 12 years later, in a very similar position against Chigorin, Steinitz, who had learnt from this example, did indeed play Rb6 with success.
Again and again, throughout the book, we see examples of ideas which are familiar to us now, but would have been new at the time.
By 1881, as Hendriks relates, Steinitz and Zukertort were engaged in a war of words over the analysis of recent chess games: the Ink War. The war was not just about the rights and wrongs of particular moves, but about how games should be annotated: a debate which is still continuing today. Zukertort tended to publish long variations while Steinitz took a more scientific approach.
It was generally understood that Steinitz was, following Morphy’s retirement, the strongest player in the world (EdoChess ranks him top from 1868 onwards) but he hadn’t been active since his 1876 match against Blackburne, and his last tournament had been Vienna 1873. Questions were now being asked as to whether Zukertort was now stronger, so Steinitz decided to return to the fray in 1882, again in Vienna.
This was the strongest tournament yet held, and resulted in a very exciting finish. Steinitz and Winawer shared first place, a point ahead of Mason, with Zukertort and Mackenzie another half point behind, but Zukertort scored 1½/2 against his arch rival.
Another strong tournament took place in London in 1883, and again Steinitz and Zukertort took part.
Here’s Zukertort’s exciting Round 3 encounter with Mason.
White had the draw in hand before blundering on move 57. Curiously, Mason lost the return encounter with Zukertort through a very similar oversight.
Hendriks comments: Such small tactics were often missed in those days, as back then the possibilities for training your tactics were minimal. Today’s diligent student solves more tactical puzzles in a day than the old masters did in their entire lives.
This is one of the themes of both this and his previous book. We might assume that the 19th century greats didn’t have today’s opening knowledge but were equally good at tactics. Hendriks’ view, reinforced by many examples here, is that they weren’t – and unsurprisingly so, as they didn’t have the opportunities for practice and training. Zukertort himself was particularly prone to blunders which would have shamed your club’s third team players.
It was in Round 6 of this game when Zukertort played his Most Famous Game, to which Hendriks develops a whole chapter.
With three rounds to go, Zukertort had reached the extraordinary score of 22/23, losing only to Steinitz in the first cycle, but he then lost his last three games, two of them to the tournament tail-enders. Was this due to problems with his health, or with the medication he was using to treat his health problems, or just a random occurrence? Hendriks considers the evidence here.
Finally, we move onto the 1886 World Championship match. By that point Steinitz had moved to America, and Zukertort was also spending time there, so the contest took place in New York, St Louis and New Orleans. Most of the twenty games are full of interest, and Hendriks contextualises and analyses them in depth.
Ironically, the ‘modernist’ Steinitz opened with the king’s pawn in all his white games, while the ‘tactical’ Zukertort, in all but one of his white games, chose the supposedly more modern and positional Queen’s Gambit. This demonstrates, I suppose, that the dichotomy between them was more about a personality clash than anything else, although, by this point, the two men seemed to have been on tolerably friendly terms.
Several of Zukertort’s white games reached IQP positions, which were, at the time, very little understood, so are of some historical interest.
Here’s the 9th game.
Hendriks has some interesting things to say about the hanging pawns position after Black’s 22nd move, which will give you some idea of his annotation style.
The exchange of pieces in the past few moves did not help White, but Zukertort apparently had a lot of confidence in his attacking chances in this position. However the beautiful knight on e5 can be chased away, and White does not have that many pieces to strengthen his attack either, so he no longer has the better chances. Therefore, this was a good moment for the quiet move 23. h3. Many contemporary players would play this way, but in those days such a prophylactic move was not a matter of course. The idea of prophylaxis would only be introduced a quarter of a century later by Aron Nimzowitsch. This strategy consists of improving one’s position and protected potential weaknesses even before they are threatened.
Steinitz won the first game in brilliant style, but Zukertort then won four in a row. After that, with Zukertort’s health problems worsening, it was mostly one-way traffic, with Steinitz emerging a convincing winner by 12½ to 7½, becoming the first official world champion.
The end of the story is rather sad: Zukertort’s standard of play and health both declined rapidly, and he died in London two years later.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, just as I did its predecessor. Willy Hendriks is a born storyteller: the book is grippingly written. You’ll always want to turn over the page to see what happens next. If you thought chess history was boring this book may persuade you to think again. It’s beautifully produced and copiously illustrated. I suppose more serious chess historians than me might regret that it’s not as fully referenced as you’d expect from an academic history book, but it’s quite understandable that the author and publisher would take the approach they chose. The English is fluent and highly readable, if not always totally idiomatic. I found one or two minor mistakes, but they didn’t interfere with my enjoyment. If you’re interested in improving your rating, the book is there to help you as well. As with many books from this publisher, most chapters are preceded by puzzles based on games discussed within: if you feel inclined you can attempt to solve them before reading on. If you love, as I do, 19th century chess history, you won’t want to miss this book. You don’t just get the games: there’s a lot of engrossing information about the leading personalities of the day and the way top level chess was organised as well.
You might want to start, if you haven’t read it already, with On the Origin of Good Moves, which is more general and wide-ranging, before continuing with this book. You may not agree with all the author’s opinions and conclusions, but you’ll find something thought-provoking on every page. This is the ideal chess book for me and goes straight into my list of all-time favourites. I can’t wait to see what Willy Hendriks writes about next.
In Part 3 of the history of Richmond Junior Chess Club I left you with this news from May 1993.
Richmond Informer 14 May 1993
This was the start of the Richmond Chess Initiative, which was doing very much the same thing that Chess in Schools & Communities now does, but on a local level, within the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames.
Local businessman Stanley Grundy had met Anne Summers, then the Mayor of Richmond upon Thames, at a concert. He had recently come across this paper claiming that chess improves children’s academic performance, and, for this reason, wanted to put money into schools in the borough.
There were all sorts of questions here about the validity of the paper’s methods and conclusions, and, given that Richmond schools, as you might expect from the nature of the demographics of the Borough, topped the national league tables every year anyway, how much scope there was for improving the results even more. But, nevertheless, Stanley wanted to donate some money, which was good news for us at Richmond Junior Chess Club.
A steering committee was formed, including representatives from local schools, notably Jane Lawrence, Headteacher of Sheen Mount, the local council and local businesses, local Grandmaster Daniel King was also invited to join and I was paid to manage the chess programme. There was no interest in putting chess on the curriculum, but a number of (mostly primary) schools were interested in starting after-school clubs. So part of my job was helping schools with these clubs, and, as more schools became interested, other chess tutors were also recruited.
All sorts of other things happened. Every year national inter-area competitions take place, run by the English Primary Schools Chess Association, at Under 9, Under 11 and Girls Under 11 levels. RJCC were now, through our committee of parents, running these teams. We were able to combine our own strong players with those from schools in the Borough, many of whom we also recruited to join us, to create formidably strong Under 9 and Under 11 teams. Although we were, in effect, competing as a club against mostly county teams we always finished near the top, winning national titles on several occasions.
Our tournaments were now billed as the Richmond Chess Initiative Championships, thanks to Stanley Grundy’s sponsorship. Here’s a game from our 1994 championship between two of our strongest young players. To play through any game in this article, click on any move for a pop-up window.
Later in 1994 Daniel King organised our first international tournament, which took place (mostly) at the Royal Star and Garter Home for Disabled Ex-Servicemen in Richmond (you can read more about chess there in this Minor Piece). The tournament – remarkably – featured seven current or former members of RJCC, along with Danish IM Klaus Berg and two of Daniel’s Bundesliga teammates.
Luke McShane, only 10 years old, struggled in most of his games, but hit the national headlines when he beat Berg, who went on to share first place with former RJCC star (as he then was) Demetrios Agnos.
Richmond Informer 02 December 1994
The tournament was remarkable for its fighting spirit and exciting, if not always perfectly accurate games. Here’s the crosstable.
Here’s a short selection of games played by some of the RJCC representatives in this event.
At the same time we welcomed a team from Szombathely in Hungary, who played matches against a combined RJCC/Southern Counties team. Here’s a Richmond win against a future Grandmaster.
We were very big on the idea of giving our players the chance to compete against adult opposition when they were ready to do so. We ran teams in the Thames Valley League for this reason, on one occasion finishing second ahead of the Richmond & Twickenham A team.
In 1995 we were able to start a series of Richmond Rapidplays, which usually took place at the White House Community Association in Hampton. We ran six tournaments a year, with four sections, usually attracting about 100 participants, roughly equally split between juniors and adults. The top section always included IMs and sometimes also GMs, so our members had the chance to watch top players in action.
The point of what we were doing was to give our afternoon group members (1000+ rating or age 11+) the chance to play as many different opponents (of different ages) as possible, as well as to experience different openings and different time controls. Our results, and, particularly our strength in depth were testimony to the success of our approach, focusing on purposeful playing rather than teaching.
We ran our second international tournament that autumn. This time we had five past or present RJCC members, while our good friend Simon Williams completed the home contingent. Klaus Berg returned, along with popular Dutch IM Gerard Welling. The other competitors were London-based Nigerian Chiedu Maduekwe and Serbian Jovica Radovanovic. Here’s the crosstable.
Again, a short selection of games.
Here’s our sponsor Stanley Grundy writing to the local press in February 1996, with ambitions to exend the scheme both nationally and internationallly.
Richmond Informer 02 February 1996
For various reasons this didn’t happen in quite that way, but the national initiative is still successful today.
One day Stanley summoned me to his office and told me he was going to make me rich. However, he then spoke to Mike Basman, who was running Surrey junior chess under the Wey Valley banner and decided Mike was the better person to put his ideas into practice.
This was the start of what would soon become the UK Chess Challenge, which was originally sponsored by Stanley through one of his companies. It’s still running very successfully today, but, far from making Mike Basman rich it had the opposite effect.
Our big annual event during this period was the RCI Schools Chess Tournament, designed as a fun event encouraging mass participation, with clocks only used on the higher boards. Here’s a report on the 1996 event.
Richmond Informer 16 February 1996
In 1996 the club received recognition from what was then the British Chess Federation when I received a President’s Award for services to chess, which I saw as an award for the club as a whole rather than for me personally.
But we were not the only successful junior club around. My friend Mike Fox was now running his own club, Checkmate!, in Birmingham, and when they visited us in 1996 scored an impressive victory. In this drawn game our Midlands opponents were represented by a future star.
We also ran two big individual tournaments every year: our annual championships in the summer term, and an open event in the autumn term including qualifiers for the London Junior Championship as well as a section for older players. Here’s a game from the 1996 renewal.
A few years earlier, as you read last time, Luke McShane was breaking a lot of international age records, but now we had in Murugan Thiruchelvam a player who was beating even Luke’s records. He impressed with his ability to play simple positions well: something I’ve always considered the mark of a promising player. In this game he outplayed his opponent in the ending even though he was the exchange down.
Although he was only 8 years old, Murugan played top board for our Under 12 team in a year in which we became national champions (against county teams) at U18, U14, U12 and U11 levels.
Richmond Informer 03 October 1997
That autumn Garry Kasparov was in town, playing a simul against 25 teams. We were honoured to be invited to send a team of four players to take part in this event. We played under the name ‘Deep Yellow’, a play on Deep Blue referring to the colour of the shirts our teams wore at the time.
Richmond Informer 14 November 1997
Here’s the game: a Kasparov victory that may not have been published before. You’ll see that we missed a few drawing chances.
This article, as well as advertising Murugan’s success against adult opponents (the Major section was the second one down in the Richmond Rapidplays), announced a workshop for young players over the Christmas holidays.
Richmond Informer 19 December 1997
By now Luke was writing regular chess columns, here taking the opportunity to plug both Murugan and RJCC.
Irish Independent 04 April 1998
But, while the club was extraordinarily successful, I was starting to have doubts about what was happening in primary school chess clubs. For the most part the standard of play was so low that it was hard to imagine it was helping the children improve their academic performance. There was also very little interest in chess in secondary schools, so they were not continuing playing after the age of 11, seeing it as a primary school game.
The children certainly enjoyed the clubs, and we were able to encourage the stronger primary school players to join RJCC on Saturday mornings, but I struggled to see a longer term purpose.
Growing increasingly frustrated, I wrote an article expressing my views at the time, which you can read here.
Things were very different at RJCC at this point when almost every Saturday saw a new, extremely talented 7 year old turn up who had learnt from playing chess with his family at home.
One of the most notable of this generation was Robert Heaton, who, in this game, had the nerve to play the Dutch Defence against one of our favourite simul givers, Simon Williams.
At about this time the parents on the club committee decided that I should be paid for running the club. My feelings were mixed. Of course money is always useful, but I’d always seen it as a hobby which I did because it gave me a lot of personal satisfaction. They explained to me that they wanted to ensure the future of the club in case something happened to me, so I felt I had to accept.
As the millennium reached its final year Murugan made the papers again, qualifying for the British Chess Championship.
Birmingham Mail 12 January 1999
During the RCI years we were still producing national junior titles as well:
1994: Ruth Bates U14G (shared)
1995: Ruth Bates U16G and U15G (shared), Leila Nathoo U9G (shared)
1996: Ross Rattray U13, Ruth Bates U18G (shared)
1997: David Bates U15 (shared). Jonathan Zoubaida U9, Murugan Thiruchelvam U8, Ruth Bates U18G (shared)
1998: David Edwards U16 and U15, Thomas Nixon U12 (shared), Chetan Deva (U11)
1999: Shanker Menon U18 (shared)
We had had a remarkable run of success for almost a quarter of a century, but just as the calendar was changing from 1999 to 2000, junior chess was changing as well.
You’ll find out more in the final article of this series.
If you walk up to the top of Richmond Hill, past one of the most famous views in the country, you’ll see an imposing edifice opposite the gate into Richmond Park.
You’ll also see it across Petersham Meadows if you walk along the Thames Path towards Ham, Teddington and Kingston.
Author’s photograph
This was, until a few years ago, the Royal Star and Garter Home for disabled former service personnel.
There was originally a hotel on the site, which closed down in 1906, and, for several years, plans for redevelopment came to nothing. The current building was constructed between 1921 and 1924 to a design by Sir Edwin Cooper based on a 1915 plan by the great and wonderful Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, providing accommodation and nursing facilities for 180 serious injured servicemen.
Most (but not all, as we’ll see) of the residents were wheelchair users as a result of injuries suffered in the First World War. In the days before parasports they were unable to access physical recreations so chess was a popular activity there. It wasn’t long before the members of Richmond Chess Club, just downhill, paid them a visit.
Their first match seems to have been in Spring 1926, and they returned in the Autumn.
Richmond Herald 27 November 1926
It’s good to see both sides fielding a lady player: I presume Sister Allsopp was a chess playing member of the nursing staff.
This was, in effect, the club second team, but the following month their star player Wilfred Hugh Miller Kirk, visited to give a simultaneous display.
The results of their Spring 1927 match were published.
Richmond Herald 19 February 1927
It was unfortunate (but typical for the time) that two of the Richmond visitors failed to put in an appearance. The Star and Garter top board, Clifford William Hill, did well to draw his game.
Other local chess clubs, such as the Old Richmondians, visited them for matches as well.
When the newly formed Barnes Village Chess Club paid their first visit they were understandably apprehensive: “Thoughts of the game took second place to thoughts of the war and its effects”. But when they got there they discovered that “as they faced the foe most bravely, so now they take their present handicap most cheerfully”.
Richmond Herald 15 October 1927
Clifford Hill seems to have been a pretty strong player who rarely lost in these matches.
In 1931 he even secured a draw against the more than useful Barnes Village top board George Archer Hooke.
Richmond Herald 21 November 1931
Perhaps we should find out more about him.
Clifford William Hill, known to his friends as Tony, was born (as William Clifford Hill) on 27 October 1898 in Brierley Hill, Staffordshire, an industrial town in the Black Country best known for its glass and steel works. His father, Horace Emmanuel Holloway Hill, was employed by one of the local ironworks before becoming a railway platelayer and then a gas fitter. A very different background, to be sure, from the middle class gentlemen he would have encountered in his matches against Richmond and Barnes Village chess clubs.
I can’t find any very obvious WW1 service records for him, nor can I locate him in the 1921 census. Secondary sources claim he signed up at the age of 17, was severely wounded at the Battle of the Somme, and spent time in a number of hospitals.
It turns out he was a rather remarkable man. Not only a more than competent chess player, but the editor of the Star and Garter Magazine and a multi-talented musician as well: singer (both alto and tenor), violinist and conductor.
Here he is, arranging, conducting and performing at a concert party.
Richmond Herald 22 October 1927
One of the many organisations providing entertainment to the residents was a Post Office group called the Camel Corps. One of their members, Helen Isabel Frances (Nell) Pollard, was smitten, and in 1932 they tied the knot in nearby Petersham.
Nell’s father’s middle name suggests a family interest in music, doesn’t it?
Weekly Dispatch (London) 01 May 1932
According to this article, they were moving to Sandgate, near Folkestone, where the Star and Garter had a seaside branch. It also appeared to mark the end of his chess career: his last mention seems to be earlier that year.
In 1934 Clifford (or should we call him Tony) and his friends achieved national prominence when they appeared on the wireless.
The People 11 November 1934
Tony, the man with the smile. How wonderful!
The 1939 Register found Tony and Nell in Brierley Hill with his parents, but by the time of the 1945 Electoral Roll they’d moved to Sir Oswald Stoll Mansions in Fulham a block of mansion flats right next to Chelsea FC providing supported living for disabled former service personnel.
Clifford William Hill died back at the Star and Garter on 13 March 1952, at the age of 53. A remarkable man from a very modest background who, despite being confined to a wheelchair, achieved much in his life. He would have been a popular and important figure in the Star and Garter, and deserves to be remembered today, not only as the man with the smile. I’m sure chess, along with music, and, of course, Nell, brought him much satisfaction.
By the time he’d moved on, another highly competent chess player had moved in. You can see him back in that 1931 team list. Step forward Reginald Aubrey Tarrant.
Reginald was very different. Unlike most of the residents, he had been too young to serve in the war, and he was in the Star and Garter through illness rather than injury.
He was born on 12 May 1909 in Banbury, Oxfordshire, the second son of Francis Llewellyn Tarrant and Ethel Agnes Best, but by 1911 the family had moved to Acton where his father was working as an oil merchant. This was a family which would have both problems and tragedies to contend with.
In 1912 their third son, Francis Llewellyn junior was born, but only survived a few months. The following year, their oldest son, Hugh Gordon Tarrant, aged 6, was knocked down and killed by a car. Reggie and Gordon were sitting on stones marking the boundary between Ealing, Acton and Brentford. A car travelling at an excessive speed swerved to avoid a horse and cart, and hit the two boys, killing Gordon and seriously injuring Reggie. The coroner’s court recorded a verdict of manslaughter and the driver was sent for trial at the Old Bailey, but at this subsequent trial he was cleared of all charges, one would imagine much to the parents’ distress.
Having lost two sons, one to a tragic accident which left their third son seriously injured, it’s perhaps unsurprising that Francis and Ethel’s marriage hit problems. By 1916 Francis had moved to Southsea, where he ran a business as a motor engineer and driving instructor, which, he claimed, exempted him from military service. Ethel was back in Ealing claiming maintenance arrears. Perhaps they got back together as a daughter, Dorothy May, was born in 1918 (or perhaps he wasn’t her father). But in 1921 Ethel was again claiming maintenance, while Francis made a counter claim on the grounds of her alleged adultery.
Middlesex County Times 16 March 1921
And just look who else was up before the magistrates at the same time. None other than Ealing Chess Club Treasurer Sydney Meymott, fined for not having his dog muzzled.
Meanwhile the 1921 census found Francis still in Southsea, apparently married to Florence May Tarrant (he’d later be ‘married’ to Harriet Grace Tarrant). Dorothy, although not yet three years old, seemed to be boarding at St Ethelburga’s convent school/orphanage in Walmer, Kent (the other pupils were aged between 5 and 19), with the census record claiming, incorrectly, that her father was dead. I haven’t been able to find a record for Ethel.
Reggie was a boarder at the Rosemary Home in Herne Bay, Kent. This was an outdoor convalescent home for boys, which suggests to me that he might possibly have had tuberculosis.
Herne Bay Press 23 July 1921
He made a good recovery, and in 1924, at the age of 15, joined the Royal Navy as an Arethusa Boy, where he trained as a telegraphist. He might well be one of the cadets in this film.
In 1928 he suffered a serious illness (heat stroke) and on 18 June 1930 he was invalided out due to organic heart disease. This must have been so severe that he was unable to live independently. It was at this point, or shortly afterwards, that he moved into the Star and Garter, where he rapidly became one of their strongest chess players. Did he learn chess there, or did he already know how to play?
By 1931, as we’ve seen, he was playing in the Star and Garter chess team, and he was soon invited to join Richmond Chess Club. It would be interesting to know how he travelled there. He was a decade or more younger than most of the other residents, and, also unlike them, probably not a wheelchair user. Walking downhill into the town centre might not have been a problem, but walking back up to the top of Richmond Hill might not be a good idea if you’re suffering from organic heart disease. Perhaps someone gave him a lift.
Here he is, in 1933, playing on bottom board against the NPL.
Richmond Herald 25 February 1933
He was now making rapid progress. In the 1933-34 club championship he shared first place in his section with Wilfred Kirk, only losing the tie-break game, and also finished 3rd in the handicap tournament.
Tarrant continued to advance in the ranks, and by 1936 he was regularly playing on third board behind Wilfred Kirk and Ronald George Armstrong: I’d guess he was by now about 2000 strength: a strong club player.
In this Beaumont Cup (then as now, the Surrey Second Division) match Armstrong presumably failed to turn up, while Kirk faced an interesting young oponent on top board.
Richmond Herald 29 February 1936
David Hooper later became a distinguished writer and historian of the game, best known for co-authoring The Oxford Companion to Chess with Ken Whyld.
A couple of weeks later Richmond did well to win a friendly match against a strong Kingston team headed by Mr & Mrs Michell.
Richmond Herald 14 March 1936
James Mcewen Ellam (1882-1965) would, a decade or so later, be one of the leading lights responsible for founding the Thames Valley Chess League. For many years a competition was held at the start of every season for a trophy named in his honour.
That season Reginald Tarrant (was he still known as Reggie, I wonder?) won both the handicap tournament and match prize (presumably for the best results in club matches: this was a pocket chessboard presented by the Surrey County Chess Association) as well as finishing half a point behind Kirk and Guy Fothergill in the club championship. He was also elected onto the committee at the 1936 AGM. When Kirk moved away in 1937, Tarrant now found himself on board 2 in club matches.
However, he wasn’t among the opposition when Sir George Thomas visited the Star and Garter to give a simul.
Richmond Herald 21 November 1936
(Sir George George Thomas? So good they named him twice?)
But when war broke out again, Richmond Chess Club, with an ageing membership, decided to close its doors for the duration. The 1939 Register recorded Tarrant in the Star and Garter, a Patient and Incapacitated: a decade or more younger than most of the other residents. He was still playing chess there. Here he is, in 1941, drawing with a famous visitor.
Richmond Herald 08 February 1941
Mrs Dudley Short was herself a keen player: on the same page it was announced that the Richmond branch of the NCW (National Council of Women?) ran a fortnightly chess club: you could phone her if you wanted to join.
When the Second World War came to an end, a new chess club, the Georgian Chess Club, opened in Richmond. Reginald was one of its first members.
Richmond Herald 08 December 1945
This would later become Richmond Chess Club, taking over the mantle of the ‘Old Richmond and Kew Club’, but that’s a story for another time. Reginald’s appearance here was his first, but perhaps also his last. A few months earlier he had married Peggy Dora Roberts. She’d been recorded as a Children’s Nurse in 1939 so it was quite possible that she was one of the Star and Garter nurses. I suspect that the happy couple moved in with his mother, who was living close to Kew Gardens.
Reginald and Peggy went on to have three daughters. There are birth records for Carol (1948) and Alison (1953), but, according to an old post by Carol on Genes Reunited there was another girl, Valerie. But shortly after Alison’s birth, on 4 September 1953, Reginald Aubrey Tarrant died at the age of 44.
Back at the Star and Garter, there seemed to be less interest in chess, with most local clubs closing during the war. I have a recollection of some contacts and perhaps friendly matches during the late 1960s, but chess was changing, and perhaps the Star and Garter was as well.
But in 1994 chess at the Star and Garter was back in the news when it hosted an international tournament as part of the Richmond Chess Initiative.
Richmond Informer 02 December 1994
But that’s another story, which will be told in Part 4 of the history of Richmond Junior Chess Club, coming, with any luck, fairly soon.
Although they were no longer playing regularly against outside clubs, chess remained popular with Star and Garter residents such as Charles Grove.
Richmond Informer 24 January 1997
The Star and Garter home in Richmond closed several years ago and, sadly but inevitably, was converted into luxury flats. While the building had been designed specifically for wheelchair users, most of the residents were, by that time, elderly former service personnel with dementia, and the building was no longer fit for purpose. They decided their best option was to sell off the property and construct a new purpose-built home in Surbiton. You can find out more about their history here.
I’m sure both Clifford and Reginald gained much enjoyment from playing chess at the Star and Garter, and, in the latter’s case, also at Richmond Chess Club. They both had difficult lives: one, from a working class family, who was severely injured in the war, the other, from a more middle class but dysfunctional family, who was incapacitated by health problems. Chess is just as much for their likes as it is for prodigies, grandmasters and champions.
I’ve always been unhappy about the reasons given for promoting chess, on local, national and international levels. For me, we should be talking, no, shouting about the way chess can provide competition and friendship for those who are unable or unwilling to access physical sports. Richmond wasn’t the only place where, in the inter-war years, those with physical handicaps were encouraged to play chess. You’ll find out more in the next Minor Piece, which will take us to another part of the country.
Sources and Acknowledgements:
ancestry.co.uk
findmypast.co.uk/British Newspaper Archive
Wikipedia
childrenshomes.org.uk
YouTube
Star and Garter website
I’ve just returned (on the eve of publication of this article) from a concert in which the distinguished baritone Roderick Williams performed a song composed by Sally Beamish. A few weeks ago I was at a gig where one of the musicians talked about drinking Beamish at the Cork Jazz Festival.
If you’re in Dublin you drink Guinness: if you’re in Cork you drink Beamish. Whether Sally drinks Beamish I don’t know, but she comes from the same family.
William Beamish and William Crawford founded the Cork Porter Brewery in 1791, beginning brewing the following year. William Beamish came from a distinguished family of English settlers.
Several of their family were competitive chess players in the first half of the last century. The unfortunately initialled FU Beamish was active in the Bristol area in the years leading up to the First World War, and A (or sometimes AE) Beamish was playing in London at the same time. Then there was Captain EA Beamish, who was a tournament regular for a decade or so either side of 1940.
There is some confusion about AB/AEB and EAB which I hope this article will resolve.
One of William’s many children was a son named Charles, born in 1801 (Sally is descended from his brother Richard): it’s his branch of the family who were chess players. Charles and his first wife, Louisa Howard, had four children: Ferdinand, Albert, Victoria and Alfred. He had another four children by his second wife, but, apart from noting that one of his daughters was named, with a distinct lack of political correctness, Darkey Delacour Beamish, they needn’t concern us.
Ferdinand was born in France in 1838, married Frances Anne Strickland at St John the Evangelist, Ladbroke Grove, London in 1876, then moved back to Cork where their children were born: Ferdinand Uniacke (1877), Walter Strickland, Francis Bernard, Gerald Cholmley and finally their only daughter, Agnes Olive.
It was Ferdinand Uniacke Beamish, unfortunately initialled, yes, but also splendidly named, who was our first chess playing Beamish. But it’s also worth looking at his sister, usually known as Olive, suffragette, communist and Cambridge graduate; and not the only unexpectedly radical woman you’ll meet in this article.
By 1901 the family had moved to Westbury on Trym, near Bristol, at which point FUB was working as a mechanical engineer, although the family would later run a farm.
Our first sighting of him at a chessboard is in November 1901, losing his game on a low board in a match in which Bristol and Clifton fielded a ‘very weak team’.
Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette 21 November 1901
At the age of 24, then, he was very much a novice, taking his first steps in the world of competitive chess. He was soon elected club secretary, and won a game in a simul against Francis Lee. In October 1902 he was one of a group of organisers instrumental in founding a Bristol Chess League. Here was an ambitious young man, very active as both a player and an organiser.
He was improving fast as well, and by 1903 was playing on board 5 for his county team, drawing his game in a match against Surrey.
There seems to have been some internal politics going on at the time: it was reported that FUB had resigned from Bristol and Clifton, because he had left the area, but, as well as continuing to play in county matches he was playing for Bristol Chess Club: I don’t know exactly what the relationship was between the two clubs, or indeed between the Bristol Chess League and the Gloucestershire and Bath Chess League, in which this 1906 match took place.
Cheltenham Examiner 21 March 1906
The short game published below was this one, against Bath veteran Alfred Rumboll. Black’s opening repertoire seems to have been sadly deficient. FUB preferred 6. d4 to the Fried Liver Attack, and won quickly against his opponent’s poor defence. Click on any move in any game in this article for a pop-up window.
In 1906 he decided to take part in the 3rd British Chess Championships, which took place that year in Shrewsbury. He was placed in Section A of the Second Class Section, scoring a highly respectable 6 points from 10 games.
Confusingly, FUB was also playing for Clifton Chess Club, winning their club championship, and was also taking a high board for his county in correspondence matches, such as this one against Norfolk, where he defended the Evans Gambit against a Norfolk clergyman.
By this time, he was also playing a lot of correspondence chess, not only for Gloucestershire, but also for Ireland and in their national correspondence championship. In this game from a county match Ferdinand gains control of the centre against his opponent’s rather feeble opening and launches a rapid kingside attack.
In 1911 he reached the finals of the county championship, losing the play-off against the ill-fated Samuel Walter Billings.
The 1913 British Championships took place in nearby Cheltenham, and FUB returned to the fray, again taking part in the 2nd Class A section, finishing 3rd with 6½/10.
The Cork Weekly News published several of his games: perhaps he submitted them himself so that his friends and relations in his family’s home city would see them.
In this game he quickly gained an advantage against his opponent’s unimpressive opening play.
Superior opening play in this game again gave him the opportunity to demonstrate his attacking skills.
His opponent in this game was, amongst other things, one of the founders of the Gloster Aircraft Company. There’s more about the family firm here.
The dangerous Albin Counter-Gambit was just becoming popular at this time, but Ferdinand knew how to deal with it.
From these games you get the impression of a player much better than his second class status would suggest, with a good knowledge of the latest theory along with a fluent attacking style and tactical ability. But quite often things went wrong, and when they went wrong they went very wrong.
He was on the wrong end of a Best Game Prize winner here against a Danish opponent. As soon as he ran out of theory he blundered into a stock checkmating tactic.
The 1914 British Championships took place in Chester, and this time Ferdinand Uniacke Beamish was promoted to the 1st Class section, but with the UK having declared war against Germany a few days earlier, the players’ minds would have been on other battlefields.
Three games are available: losses to Moses and Stevenson, and this perhaps rather lucky win against George Marshall Norman, who had an impressively long and successful chess career.
He continued playing for Bristol, now with George Tregaskis as a teammate, through 1915, and the last record we have of him is a correspondence game from 1917.
It seems like he gave up chess at this point to concentrate on running the family farm. The 1921 Census found him, living with his elderly mother and a servant, at Dennisworth Farm, Pucklechurch, a village to the east of Bristol. He married in 1924, but it ended in divorce a few years later. In the 1939 Register he was still there, giving his occupation as Dairy Farmer. In 1941 he emigrated to New Zealand, where, according to the 1949 Electoral Roll, he was again working as a Dairy Farmer. He died there in 1957, four decades after his last competitive game of chess.
To resolve the question over the identity of Ferdinand’s London contemporary A/AE Beamish, we need to consider Charles’s youngest son, Alfred, who was born in Cork in 1845 or thereabouts.
We first pick him up in England in 1878, where he marries Selina Taylor Prichard in Hastings. Selina had previously been married to the much older Surgeon General William White, who had left her with a daughter named Jessie Mabel.
Mabel (she preferred to use her middle name) is worth a detour. Despite her military background she was a committed pacifist. Her husband’s name was very familiar to me, given my background in Anglican church music, but may not be to you. Percy Dearmer was a socialist priest best remembered, at least by me, for editing The English Hymnal along with one of my musical heroes, Ralph Vaughan Williams. Their elder son, Geoffrey, was a poet who lived to the age of 103.
Alfred was a barrister and solicitor, and after his marriage he and Selina settled in Richmond, where their two sons, Alfred Ernest (1879) and Edmund Arthur (1880) were born. We can pick them up in the 1881 census at 13 Spring Terrace, Marsh Gate Road, Richmond. Spring Terrace, now in Paradise Road, is an impressive row of Georgian houses. The family were clearly very well off, employing four servants, a housemaid, a nurse, an under nurse and a cook.
By 1891 they’d moved to 115 Church Road, a large house near the top of Richmond Hill, just as you approach St Matthias Church. Alfred senior, Selina, Mabel and their older son were there. It’s not clear where the younger boy was: perhaps away at school.
Alfred and Selina had decided that their sons should be educated at Harrow as day boys, and so, a few years later, they moved up to North West London, although it would seem that they also retained possession of their Richmond house. Alfred senior died in Harrow in 1898, and the 1901 census found Selina and her sons there, along with two servants. Neither of their sons had a job: the family was so well off that they had no need of paid employment.
We first spot A Beamish as a Harrow chess player in 1903.
Harrow Gazette 05 December 1903
Much more recently, Victoria Hall, in the town centre and very close to where they were living, was, for many years, the home of the current Harrow Chess Club. I played several Thames Valley League games there myself.
At this point we need to look at the controversy concerning the identity of this A (or sometimes AE) Beamish. It seems, on the surface, not unreasonable to assume this was Alfred Ernest, but there were other pointers suggesting it was really Edmund Arthur. There has also been a suggestion that it might have been an Arthur Edmund Beamish, perhaps a distant cousin, who was living in Islington at the time. Given that our brothers were round the corner from this sighting, though, this seems unlikely.
The older brother, Alfred Ernest Beamish, took up the game of tennis, later becoming one of the leading English players of his day, an opponent and occasional doubles partner of none other than Sir George Thomas, an author and administrator. His career was interrupted by the First World War, in which he served as a Lieutenant in the Royal Army Service Corps, so he would have been involved in administrative work. Some secondary sources refer to him as a Captain. Here, you can see his wife offering some tennis tips.
The younger brother, Edmund Arthur Beamish, by contrast, was a soldier. Although he was without employment in 1901, he had previously signed up to fight in the Second Boer War, serving as a Lieutenant in the 28th Battalion Imperial Yeomanry, and would rejoin, also serving, like his brother, in the First World War, where he reached the rank of Captain in the 1/18th Battalion London Regiment.
To identify the chess player for certain, we need to spin forward to the year 1912. AEB took part in the Australasian Open Tennis Championship in December that year, reaching the finals of both the singles and doubles, leaving London on the Themistocles on 12 September, and arriving back home on board the Omrah on 14 March 1913.
Meanwhile, the chess playing AB was competing in the City of London Chess Championship at the same time, which tells us that the tennis player couldn’t possibly have been the chess player.
There’s corroborative evidence as well: both brothers, like their half-sister, preferred to use their middle names. When EAB joined the army in 1899 he gave his name as plain Arthur, and when AEB returned from his tennis tournament, his name on the register of passengers was A Ernest Beamish.
So we’ll assume from now on that EAB (not AEB) was the 1903-1914 chess player referred to in the press as A Beamish or AE Beamish.
Returning to 1904, in February that year Emanuel Lasker gave a simultaneous display against members of the Metropolitan Chess Club at the Criterion Restaurant in London, allowing consultation. He won 19 games and drew 1, playing black against Messrs Beamish and Lowenthal in consultation. This must have been our Mr Beamish: his consultation partner was probably Frederick Kimberley Loewenthal.
It seems Lasker missed a few chances for an advantage here. As always, click on any move for a pop-up window.
In 1905 he took part in the Second Class Open section of the Kent County Chess Association tournament at Crystal Palace, scoring 5 points for a share of 4th place. Our friend Wilfred Hugh Miller Kirk tied for first place.
British Chess Magazine May 1906
Here is is, third from the right in the top row, playing for Hampstead in 1905-06.
In 1906 he competed, along with his cousin Ferdinand, in the British Chess Championships in Shrewsbury. He was unable to stay for the full fortnight, so was placed in the One-Week First Class section.
A pretty good performance: drawing with the very strong Herbert Levi Jacobs was no mean feat.
This ‘short and sweet’ game, against an opponent who understandably preferred to remain anonymous, was published later the same year. At this time he seemed closely involved with four chess clubs: Harrow, Hampstead, Metropolitan and City of London.
Edmund Arthur Beamish took part in the prestigious City of London Club Championship on four occasions, but without conspicuous success. In 1907-08, 1909-10 and 1910-11 he finished down the field, but with occasional good results against master opponents. In the 1912-13 Diamond Jubilee Tournament, which had four preliminary sections, he again struggled.
In this game from the 1910-11 event he scored a notable scalp, although it must be said that Wainwright was playing well below his usual strength in the tournament.
In this game from the same event Beamish had rather the worse of the opening, but managed to turn the tables and, although he missed a neat mate in 3, brought home the full point.
His opponent in this quick win finished in last place.
In early 1911 he married Edith Ada Jenner, and, by the time of the census they had set up home at 10 Fairholme Road, West Kensington. He described himself in the census is ‘late Lieutenant Imperial Yeomanry’. They would go on to have two children, Desmond (1915) and Selina (1918), both born in Hastings.
In 1912 the British Championships took place in his home town of Richmond, and he entered the First Class A section.
A pretty good result, even though his loss against Arthur Compton Ellis was awarded a Best Game Priz.
By now he’d transferred his allegiance from Harrow and Hampstead to his local club, West London.
But soon war intervened, and, now with two young children to support, he didn’t return to the chessboard.
By the time of the 1921 census he was visiting his elderly mother, who was living in the family home back in Richmond. He now had a job, working as an accounts clerk for R Seymour Corporate Accountant. There were three servants in residence, a nurse, a cook and a parlourmaid. His wife and children, meanwhile, had moved in with her elderly parents in Hastings. Had their marriage broken up, I wonder.
And then, in 1935, he made an unexpected comeback. Over the next few years he played regularly for Middlesex in county matches, and in congresses in Hastings, London and Margate, often with some success. It seems that a twenty year break and advancing years didn’t affect his chess strength.
I’ve only managed to locate one game from these years, a loss against the Dutch Ladies’ Champion Fenny Heemskerk.
Here’s the crosstable from that event.
The 1939 Register found EAB, his wife and daughter living together in the old family home, 115 Church Road, Richmond. He was described as a retired army captain. They had no domestic staff and some of the rooms had been let out to others, so perhaps they weren’t as well off as they had been.
Although he was living in Richmond and very active again in both county and tournament chess, he doesn’t seem to have joined any of the clubs in our Borough. He did, however, make a guest appearance at Barnes Police Station in 1941, playing in a simul against his brother’s old tennis chum Sir George Thomas (they had played out a draw in the City of London Club Championship 30 years earlier).
Richmond Herald 08 November 1941
In the same year he joined West London Chess Club, which, while most clubs had closed, was flourishing with an impressive range of members and activities. EAB played regularly in matches against a variety of opponents as well as competing in their regular lightning tournaments and other internal competitions.
Here’s a club photograph from 1943. Beamish is second from the right in the front row.
West London Chess Club Gazette October 1943
In this game he played on Board 1 against Upminster: his opponent was an undertaker by profession. The West London Chess Club Gazette describes it as ‘an example of the fatal consequences of a premature attack’, but Stockfish points out that White missed a win on move 11.
He returned to tournament play after the war, taking part in the Major A section at Hastings in 1945-46. With the London League returning to action, he played 12 games for West London, scoring 6 wins, 4 draws and only 2 losses.
Shortly afterwards he was taken seriously ill, and died on 13 October 1946, at the age of 66. His club published a fine tribute to one of their strongest and most respected members.
I wonder what happened to his extensive Chess Library. Does anyone at West London Chess Club know?
EdoChess gives his rating before WW1 as just below 2100, which seems reasonable: a strong club player who could score the occasional result against master standard opposition. His cousin Ferdinand was perhaps slightly weaker, although he played some highly entertaining chess.
There’s one more mystery, there was an A Beamish playing for Devon in the years leading up to World War 1, mostly by correspondence but occasionally over the board. I can’t find any Devon connection for him, but his Uncle Albert, about whom very little seems to be known died in Devon in 1920. Was it him? Who knows?
And who knows where my next Minor Piece will take you?
Sources and Acknowledgements:
ancestry.co.uk
findmypast.co.uk
Wikipedia
English Chess Forum (contributions from Gerard Killoran and others)
West London Chess Club Gazette
BritBase (John Saunders)
EdoChess (Rod Edwards)
YouTube
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