is different, and the ability to force the win or salvage a draw in the often complex reaches of the endgame is crucial to success in serious play. I was beating Mr Armitage in equal combat fairly consistently by the end of my first year, and he wrote to my father asking if he might take me to compete in the County under-15 Championship during the summer.
12
My father kept the trophy from that first tournament on the mantelpiece in his study for the rest of his life. There were to be others during those years at school, the County Championship, the British Boys Championship, and more. I had joined the chess club in the town, and I was in the process of building my own chess library. Armed with suggestions from Mr Armitage, I asked any relatives interested in buying me presents to give chess books. Everyone knew what I wanted for Christmas or my birthday. All they had to do was to ask me for a title. Some aunts and uncles gave up asking and simply sent book tokens twice a year. It was not long before a useful library began to take shape.
My decision to devote my life to chess was, of course, less successful. I had judged it best to say nothing of my plans until I was within sight of going up to Trinity. It was inevitable that in my final year of school, I would give some thought to what subject I would read once I reached Cambridge. Looking back now, I see how remarkable it was that I did not once doubt that I would get a place there to read whatever I chose to read. I was working hard, and the school had good connections with Trinity. But my parents worried that I was playing too much chess, devoting too much time to studying the game. They warned me that my academic results would suffer. They never did. It is difficult to explain to someone who has never experienced it that, when you understand the governing first principles of a discipline, it costs little mental energy to pursue it. You can carry on with your other activities with no loss of energy as long as you budget your time carefully. I duly got top marks in my higher examination in English, French, and German, and was offered a place to go up to Trinity in October 1931.
When I came home from school for the last time in June, I had the inevitable discussion with my father. I remember the evening well, warm and balmy, the French windows of the study open to the lawn of the manor house, as I took a glass of brandy with him after dinner. I knew that much had changed since Roger had stood in that same place for his interview four years earlier. He had embarked on a trip through France; there had seemed to be little sense of urgency about his future plans. At Trinity, he had read classics and philosophy, subjects which had nothing very much to do with his future as a baronet running an estate in rural Lancashire. But even then, there had been signs that things were changing.
The General Strike had unnerved the country. Even my fatherâs friends in London, who thought of themselves as remote from the heartland of the British working classes, were affected by the human misery which was all too obviously on display. We were a northern family. My father felt a sense of obligation to the people of the North, towards whom the Government often seemed to act so contemptuously. Our family was unusual in having a car, a large Austin saloon. As we drove around Lancashire and sometimes into Yorkshire, Roger and I all too often saw boys of our own age, in very different circumstances to ours. We saw ragged, barefoot children chewing on crusts. We saw the faces of their fathers and mothers and, even at our young age, we learned to recognise the look of hopelessness and despair. My father would sometimes stop the car to talk to people he saw in the street in some dying textile or mill town, and I am still haunted by the memory of children pressing their noses up against the windows of the car, gazing intently on the intimate details of a life they had no hope of sharing. In 1929
12
My father kept the trophy from that first tournament on the mantelpiece in his study for the rest of his life. There were to be others during those years at school, the County Championship, the British Boys Championship, and more. I had joined the chess club in the town, and I was in the process of building my own chess library. Armed with suggestions from Mr Armitage, I asked any relatives interested in buying me presents to give chess books. Everyone knew what I wanted for Christmas or my birthday. All they had to do was to ask me for a title. Some aunts and uncles gave up asking and simply sent book tokens twice a year. It was not long before a useful library began to take shape.
My decision to devote my life to chess was, of course, less successful. I had judged it best to say nothing of my plans until I was within sight of going up to Trinity. It was inevitable that in my final year of school, I would give some thought to what subject I would read once I reached Cambridge. Looking back now, I see how remarkable it was that I did not once doubt that I would get a place there to read whatever I chose to read. I was working hard, and the school had good connections with Trinity. But my parents worried that I was playing too much chess, devoting too much time to studying the game. They warned me that my academic results would suffer. They never did. It is difficult to explain to someone who has never experienced it that, when you understand the governing first principles of a discipline, it costs little mental energy to pursue it. You can carry on with your other activities with no loss of energy as long as you budget your time carefully. I duly got top marks in my higher examination in English, French, and German, and was offered a place to go up to Trinity in October 1931.
When I came home from school for the last time in June, I had the inevitable discussion with my father. I remember the evening well, warm and balmy, the French windows of the study open to the lawn of the manor house, as I took a glass of brandy with him after dinner. I knew that much had changed since Roger had stood in that same place for his interview four years earlier. He had embarked on a trip through France; there had seemed to be little sense of urgency about his future plans. At Trinity, he had read classics and philosophy, subjects which had nothing very much to do with his future as a baronet running an estate in rural Lancashire. But even then, there had been signs that things were changing.
The General Strike had unnerved the country. Even my fatherâs friends in London, who thought of themselves as remote from the heartland of the British working classes, were affected by the human misery which was all too obviously on display. We were a northern family. My father felt a sense of obligation to the people of the North, towards whom the Government often seemed to act so contemptuously. Our family was unusual in having a car, a large Austin saloon. As we drove around Lancashire and sometimes into Yorkshire, Roger and I all too often saw boys of our own age, in very different circumstances to ours. We saw ragged, barefoot children chewing on crusts. We saw the faces of their fathers and mothers and, even at our young age, we learned to recognise the look of hopelessness and despair. My father would sometimes stop the car to talk to people he saw in the street in some dying textile or mill town, and I am still haunted by the memory of children pressing their noses up against the windows of the car, gazing intently on the intimate details of a life they had no hope of sharing. In 1929
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