Minor Pieces

Here’s another game played by Alfred Lenton (see here and here), from the 1936 British Championship in Bournemouth against Reginald Charles Noel-Johnson, the subject of this Minor Piece. Noel-Johnson seemed ill at ease against Lenton’s favourite Réti Opening. (Click here and paste the pgn to play through any game in this article.) [Event “British Championship: Bournemouth R5”][Date “1936.06.12”][White Continue reading

Last time we left Alfred Lenton in 1939, at the outbreak of World War 2. Although Alfred didn’t serve in the war, there were fewer opportunities for him to play chess. The county championship continued to take place, with Lenton retaining his title in 1940, and there was also a wartime county chess league, along with Continue reading

Last time you met, amongst other chess playing Leicester Ladies, Elsie Margaret Reid, a British Ladies’ Championship contender, and witnessed her marriage to Alfred Lenton. It’s now time to meet her husband. Perhaps you’ve see Michael Wood’s 2010 documentary series Story of England. If you have, you’ll be aware that it tells its story from the perspective Continue reading

We’ve met, briefly, one or two lady chess players in Leicester, and, while we’re still in the home of the 2023 British Championships, it’s time to look at the subject in more detail. Our story starts in 1912, when, at the Leicestershire Chess Club’s annual social evening, an informal tournament took place between four ladies. Continue reading

As the British Championships were taking place in Leicester when I wrote this, it seemed 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 Continue reading

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 Continue reading

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, Continue reading

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 Continue reading

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. This was, until a few Continue reading

I’d just returned (on the eve of the first publication of this article) from a concert in which the distinguished baritone Roderick Williams performed a song composed by Sally Beamish. A few weeks previously I’d been at a gig where one of the musicians talked about drinking Beamish at the Cork Jazz Festival. If you’re in Dublin you Continue reading