Looking Through Some Photographs .......

Here's a couple of fantastic photographs that have recently come to my attention - via two very different routes.  First we have a brilliant snap of a blindfold simultaneous display, being given by Coventry player Derek Horseman (great name for a chess player - what do you think his favourite piece was?) sometime around the end of the 1950s. One of his 6 opponents is nobody other than our very own John Ambler, a regular at club social nights for many years - here seen looking rather more youthful in his Whitley Abbey school uniform, second from the right of the 6 players.  Regrettably no record of the game score is available! Many thanks to John and son Richard for sharing this great photo with us.

Blindfold really did mean blindfold in those days! Derek Horseman against John Ambler (2nd right)

D.G. Horseman (b May 6, 1931 - d March 18, 2010) was a very strong player - a former King Henry VIII pupil - whose best chess years were in the 1950s. He played in four British Championships (1954/56/57/58) scoring 6/11 on each occasion. He had been British U-18 champion in 1948, and played in the 1953 and '54 Varsity matches for Oxford on Boards 3 and 1, making 2 draws. But his greatest achievement was winning the 1955/56 Hastings Challengers and so qualifying for the following year's Premier.

Writing on the English Chess Forum in 2010, Leonard Barden remembered Derek as follows:

"Derek as I knew him was a gentle, friendly and perennially good-humoured young man who honed his skills with the successful Oxford University teams of the 1950s. He was a sharp and inventive player with creative ideas, and while at Oxford improved his game from around 200 strength to near-IM level. When he qualified for the Hastings Premier he was widely expected to be outclassed but didn't allow himself to be overawed and had an excellent result given the quality of the opposition which included Larsen, Gligoric and Olafsson. The game which stands out in my memory is his draw with Szabo, then an active world title candidate close to the height of his powers. Playing Black, Derek swung a mighty mid-game tactic which had the great man fighting to hold the draw."

Horseman finished on 3/9, in 8th place, on this one and only appearance in the Hastings Premier, ahead of both Penrose and Alexander, each of whom he beat! Well, I did tell you he was a strong player!!

In another obituary Malcolm Pein wrote: "Although he pursued a successful career in education, he continued to play a lot of chess and passed his love of the game to his children and grandchildren. Until shortly before his death, he was coaching juniors at Southport Chess Club and a primary school."

At the age of 77 he was still strong enough to win the British U-175 (c2000) Championship. There's hope for us all yet!

Moving from the black and white era into full glorious technicolour, we have our second photograph. Unfortunately this doesn't connect us to quite such lofty chess reminiscences, but it does enable us to see two current club members in their earlier years, plus two more who predate my time with the club. In fact, one of them pre-dates anybody's time with the club, as the founder of both the LDCL and of the original Kenilworth Chess and Draughts Club, Stanley Gibbins, had already moved to Liverpool by 1962!

The 1994/95 LDCL Committee, with LDCL/Kenilworth Legend Stanley Gibbins. And spot the future Kenilworth Legends.

I found this photo in the 1995 Best Games and History of the Leamington and District Chess League (catchy title, eh?), written by Colin Searle, which I discovered only yesterday by a complete miracle in a second hand bookshop in Chipping Camden. I had long heard of this book, but had never seen a copy and had begun to doubt its existence, until serendipitously stumbling upon it yesterday. The bookshop was optimistically looking for £15 for this, which probably means it would have stayed on the shelves for all eternity if I hadn't come along. But while no-one else would have given anything like this amount, I would have been happy to pay £50 for it. So you can say that both the bookseller and the purchaser thought they had got a good deal!

I will be revisiting this tome on multiple occasions in the coming weeks/months/years, as it is a source of fantastic information and amusement. It might even prompt me to finally finish my "From the Archives" history of KCC - last seen at Part 16!

Back to the black and white era for our song, which is an absolute masterpiece. Jackson, looking almost as handsome as Roy in the above photo, on excellent vocal form and the brilliant, and sadly recently deceased, David Lindley being - well, brilliant - on guitar. "Looking through some photographs, I found inside a drawer, I was taken by a photograph of you. There were one or two I know you would have liked a little more, but they didn't show your spirit quite as true." Pure gold.