Andrew Thomas was descended from the well-known 19^th century Welsh Methodist minister and bibliographer, William Rowlands, (1802 - 1865) whose career is charted in the National Dictionary of Biography. William was born in Bryncroes near Pwlleli on the Lleyn peninsula and was best known for compiling the Cambrian Bibliography, the definitive list of all Welsh books from 1546 - 1800. He also wrote learned religious tracts under the nome de plume Gwylim Lleyn. In 1834 he married Anne Andrews and they had 8 children, the fourth of whom, Ellen (1840 - 1873) married a Samuel Thomas (1839 - 1889). Samuel became Mayor of Haverfordwest. Their child, William Rowland Thomas (1876 - 1935), was A. R. B. Thomas's father.

William Thomas was brilliantly academic and won a double first in Classics and Mathematics at Oxford University, and went on to become a Mathematics teacher and Deputy Head at Merchant Taylor's School, Crosby, Liverpool.

Andrew got a scholarship to St. John's College, Cambridge, and started there in September 1923, just as Lionel Penrose (problemist and father of Oliver and Jonathan) left. In the annual varsity match of 1924 Thomas played on Bd. 2 and lost to A. Oppenheim after blundering in the endgame (see p. 8 of his book for the circumstances of the finish), followed by a loss to G. S. A. Wheatcroft in 1925 and finishing with a draw to the same opponent in '26 - not exactly a distinguished record in this event. But he did win the Cambridge University Championship in each of his three years there, a feat only equalled at that time by Atkins, Tattersall and Alexander. February and March 1925 was a period of great activity for the Cambridge University chess team, with matches against other universities and some London clubs coming up every few days. During this first season, he wrote home after each one, recording the score of each game in minute handwriting on the back of a postcard, or in more detail in a letter, generally signing himself "Your affectionate son, Bendi."

Above: Ready for Cambridge

There was much more to university for Andrew than just maths lectures and chess. He had his own piano in his room, and he played rugby for his college XV and in athletics specialised in the hurdles.

The picture right is from the 1926 athletics match between St. John's and Trinity in the Inter-college competition at Fenner's. The winner was S. P. Thompson of Trinity (centre). ARB wrote home "On Wednesday I ran in the college sports, with the result that there is another gloomy story to tell. For a time I hurdled excellently, far better than in the Seniors Sports, and by the 6th hurdle was 8 yards ahead. The 7th hurdle was my undoing this time and my lead was reduced to 5 yards and lessening all the time. Finally the 10th hurdle piled on the agony and I was beaten by a foot into second place. Time 18.4 which shows I was fairly whizzing at one time. I have decided it is not lack of technique which ruins me but sheer fatigue, and that 10 hurdles is beyond my powers". There was much more to university for Andrew than just maths lectures and chess. He had his own piano in his room, and he played rugby for his college XV and in athletics specialised in the hurdles. Autumn 1925 saw A.R.B. starting his third and final year at Cambridge. With the departure of J. E. West (Downing College) he was promoted to top board and elected President. As a club president his accommodation seems to have been enhanced, as he wrote home "My rooms are now more wonderful than ever. On the left of the fireplace I have a very good piano (it is a Collard & Collard but seems better than most of theirs) and on the centre of my table is a bowl of pink tulips which, I am told, will last for years".

Their programme of matches for the season was as follows:

The day after each match, A.R.B. would send a note or postcard back home with the score of his game for his father to play through. He fully expected the result of each match to be reported in The Times with, on several occasions, the score of his own game.

This was a significant season as it marked the 50^th match between Oxford and Cambridge. The series had been initiated at the suggestion of no less a person than Howard Staunton himself. The first match was on March 28^th 1873, with 7 a side as it was always to be, and took place in London, with Steinitz adjudicating any games unfinished at 11 p.m. The number of spectators that turned up were variously reported as "about 400" (Illustrated London News) and "from 600 to 800" (City of London Chess Magazine). As sideshows to entertain the public, Zukertort played 7 at a time blindfold in one room while Blackburne played 10 in another. The significance of the Varsity Match had declined somewhat since those heady days, but was still much greater than today.

The match itself was held on Friday 19^th March 1926 at the City of London Chess Club and to celebrate the occasion, a special Jubilee Dinner was organised at the Trocadera Restaurant the following evening to which all past and current members of the two clubs were invited. After a 7 course meal, toasts were proposed and responded to. On behalf of the guests H. F. Sutherland proposed a toast on behalf of Oxford to which H. E. Atkins replied. A.R.B proposed the health of the Oxford Club to which Sir Richard Barnett MP responded. A commemorative programme was printed for the occasion and A.R.B. got his signed in pencil inside the cover by 30 of those present, including Atkins, Milner-Barry, T. H. Tylor, G. S. A. Wheatcroft, Gerald Abrahams et al.

When the Cambridge team had gone up to London to play the Imperial Club in February, he wrote home saying, "Mrs. Stevenson surprised me by saying she hoped I would enter for the British Championship at Edinburgh as she thought I would be accepted". This encouragement to relative newcomers on the chess scene was a characteristic of the then current British Ladies Champion, born Agnes Lawson, and wife of R. H. S. Stevenson, both central figures at the Imperial Club.

On the strength of this, he and the Oxford champion, Wheatcroft, were both accepted. The fact was that the entry for the event that year was disappointingly low and relatively weak; there was, for example, no Atkins (holder), Sergeant, Winter or Sir George Thomas. So in August, A.R.B. travelled north with his father, who entered the Major Open. William found the going tough against the likes of Znosko-Borovsky and finished with a modest 3 / 11. In his first British Championship, however, A. R. B. came a respectable 6^th= / 12, level with Wheatcroft, registering a fine win against 2^nd placed Cornishman R. P. Mitchell.

Within weeks of this, A.R.B. reported for duty as a schoolmaster at Blundell's School, Tiverton in Devon, Comins Mansfield's old school, where he was to spend his entire career teaching mathematics (1926 - 1967). Forty year careers at Blundells were not unusual - several colleagues appointed at the same time as A.R.B. also spent their entire working lives there.

At first, A.R.B. was on trial and his appointment was not confirmed until the Headteacher, A. E. Wynne (1917 - 30), was fully satisfied that his pupils did not shuffle their feet on the classroom floor above his office ceiling.

Above: A.R.B. sitting extreme left in the annual school photograph of 1947. His proximity to the Head, R. L. Roberts (circled), gives an idea of his seniority.

Below: House Master A.R.B. sitting for a Francis House picture in 1947, with the Monitors, Matron and House tutor, Mr. McIlwaine.

For almost 10 years since arriving at Blundell's A. R. B. had virtually retired from tournament chess, concentrating on his school career. However, he was tempted back onto the circuit in 1935 when he entered the 1^st Margate Congress. The Kent Chess Association were seeking to replicate the success of the Hastings tournament by organising a similar event in the Easter holidays, and persuaded the Margate Council to sponsor a series of congresses at the Grand Hotel, Cliftonville. The first one ran from 24^th March to April 3^rd and attracted the likes of Capablanca, Reshevsky and the veteran Mieses against whom some of the top British players could cross swords. Thomas entered the Premier Reserves, for which the organisers had devised a complex series of three Primary and Secondary groupings. Of the six players in each Primary group, the first, second and third pair were put into an appropriate Secondary group, according to their results in the Primary group. He came 5^th / 6 in Primary B, with a modest 2 / 5 after losing to Dewing in the last round, and was put into Secondary C. As he wrote home at the time, "The worst has happened! I was fairly outplayed by Dewing in a QP and so play in the bottom section. Had I won I should have gone into the top one under their elimination rules. So the luck of the move has done me down. I played my own amendment to the Dod Defence which got me through the opening safely, but it is clear now that the whole idea of the Normal Defence is too difficult for Black and offers too few chances. I doubt whether I shall play it again.

Wish me luck in the coming week. I have one very good player in my section (Fraenkel)".

In the event, he held Heinrich Fraenkel, (who wrote under the pen name Assiac) to a draw, and beat the other four players winning the Section, and the 1^st prize of £3.

Apart from Reshevsky's 1^st place over Capablanca in the Premier, this event was probably most notable for the first appearance of Elaine Saunders, "a tiny girl of about 9 who played her games and took down the moves with all the seriousness of a master". So wrote the BCM, little realising that within 4 years she would become the youngest British Ladies Champion in almost the first 100 years of the event, and a Women's World Championship candidate.

One of the players along with A.R.B. in the Reserves was the Belgian, George Koltanowski, who gave blindfold displays during breaks in the playing schedule. Realising how far his sharpness had blunted during his 10 year lay-off, A.R.B. invited Koltanowski to stay with him for a week the following year in the hope he could improve his game. In 1937 Koltanowski returned to Blundells to give one of his simultaneous blindfold displays against the boys.

Whatever benefit Koltanowski was able to impart, it must have worked well, for in 1937 Thomas entered the Worcester Centenary Congress in September and came 1^st= level with the Argentine master, Guimard, ahead of Dr. Seitz and five leading British amateurs. His win against Guimard not only won the Brilliancy Prize, but made a great impression nationally.

Above: Worcester Centenary Congress 1937: Thomas (right) on his way to a draw against Dr. Adolph Seitz.

There was a strong line-up for the 1937-37 Hastings Congress, but Vera Menchik had to drop out due to her husband's illness, and on the strength of his performance at Worcester A.R.B. was invited as a replacement, joining Reshevsky, Keres, Fine, Flohr, the Estonian Mikenas, and four top Brits.

The Times of 27^th December 1937 relished the prospect, with the first four of the foreign representatives in the running as candidates for the World Championship, and their performance at Hastings likely to have an important bearing on their prospects. "A. R. B. Thomas is one who has been too little seen at congresses in recent years; yet it is not so many years that he was the leading Cambridge University player. Everybody will wish him luck at his first appearance in the Premier Section. It would do English chess a great deal of good if he, or anybody else, could secure two or three really well-deserved victories against these formidable foreigners".

Yet whatever good Koltanowski had done for A.R.B. earlier in the year it couldn't help him in this company - it was much too big a jump in class. After his loss to Sir George Thomas in Round 3, the chess correspondent of the Times, reported "A. R. B. Thomas invented, on the spur of the moment, a new, but unfortunately unsound, counter-attack in the Petroff Defence", adding hopefully, "He has not yet found the form of which we know him to be capable". Eventually, he scraped a single point with draws against T. H. Tylor and an out-of-form Fairhurst. As Golombek observed in the BCM "A. R. B. Thomas did not seem to have enough knowledge of the modern openings and was also very nervous at his first experience in a tournament of this strength. He got bad games out the opening, after which, of course, you have little chance of escape against players of the front rank. We feel sure he will do better next time".

Above: Caricatures by Moss from the local Hastings paper, showing Thomas bordered by Fairhurst (left) and the Lithuanian Vladas Mikenas.

Undeterred, however, he entered the 4^th Margate Congress after Easter. He was spared encountering Alekhine, Spielmann, Petrov and Böök in the Premier and proved a little more at ease in the Premier Reserves A against Najdorf, List, Conde, Rossolimo, Klein, and four others. He finished with 4 points, his four losses being offset by wins over Najdorf, Conde and H. H. Cole.

In August 1939, the uncertain political situation combined with the fact that a number of key players were involved in the Buenos Aires Olympiad, the traditional British Championship was abandoned, but replaced by a congress at Bournemouth with an international flavour. There were three 12-man sections; the Premier and Major Open sections A and B. Winter did not show up and Wallis was promoted at short notice, beating Thomas in the first round on the way to a creditable overall performance in the circumstances. Thomas got a notable scalp in beating Landau in Round 2, after both players were in great time trouble in which Landau blundered a piece as a consequence when in the slightly better position. In Round 8 another time scramble ensued in which the 74 year old Mieses lost a rook but still managed to beat Thomas after the adjournment. However, A.R.B. finished strongly with 3 wins from the last 3 rounds to rescue a reasonable performance.

The British Ladies Championship went ahead as scheduled, the diminutive 13 year old schoolgirl, Elaine Saunders, winning by a country mile.

War was declared by Chamberlain on the eve of the final round, and the two Dutchmen played out a quick draw that evening and returned home immediately. That same day in Buenos Aires, the English team withdrew from the Olympiad and Sir George Thomas, Milner-Barry and Alexander set sail for home immediately

Back at Blundell's, school life, as in Delderfield's book, may have been orderly on the whole, but it was not without its little dramas from time to time. In 1943, for example, a 31 year old Welshman, R. L. Roberts, was appointed Headmaster and started a drive for modernity and firm discipline. "Bloody Bob" was tenacious and bullying of both staff and pupils, and a group of the staff eventually protested by writing a joint letter to the Governors. However, they not only backed the Head but authorised him to get rid of the troublemakers. A number of staff did indeed move on to other things at this time, and A.R.B., too, offered his resignation, but the Head persuaded him to stay on, a further indication, if any were required, of the extent to which he was valued. Shortly after this, the Head was involved in a scandal involving allegations of Black Magic in the Chapel, an exorcism, an affair, a divorce and alleged physical violence. Unsurprisingly, the Head resigned in May 1947, and went on to join the ministry. No one could call A.R.B's life at Blundells dull.

The death of his father in 1936 and the war years did little to break his allegiance to his native Lancashire team for whom he still turned out. In the 1945 - 46 season, for example, in the Semi-Final of the Counties Championship he played on Bd. 5 against Middlesex, under Abrahams, Broadbent, Fairhurst and Rhodes. In the Final against Warwickshire, Fairhurst dropped out and Thomas moved up to Bd. 4 where he beat Ritson Morry on the way to Lancashire's eighth Championship title since 1921. When playing in the pre-war tournaments, he was always listed as Liverpool player.

According to the Chessmetrics website, his best-ever rating was in 1941 when it was 2479 (235), the 119^th highest in the world. His best tournament performance was at Bournemouth 1939, where he scored a tournament rating of 2556 (244).

The first post-war British Championship was held at Nottingham in 1946. Probably on the strength of his pre-war performances, A.R.B. was invited to play and was thus involved in the biggest upset in the event's history. The Scottish Federation had been invited to nominate a player, and they came up with the Elgin solicitor, Robert Forbes Combe, whose main claim to fame at that time was losing the shortest serious game in chess history (Folkestone 1933, when he resigned after losing a piece on his 4^th move). At first, his nomination was refused as not being up to the required standard, but the Scots stuck to their guns and Combe played. Not only that, but he beat the revered C. H. O'D Alexander in the first round. In Round 2, A.R.B. had the chance to show that Combe's first round win was a fluke, but he too was knocked over by a brilliant sacrificial attack, and the Scot could not be caught thereafter. Combe's eventual victory was little short of sensational at the time, while Thomas finished in last place, level with Frank Parr and Bob Wade. In his book, A.R.B. paid tribute to Combe: "I should like to record here what a great player I thought he was, and how sorry I was that he died prematurely. Another thing worth recording about him is that he played very quickly and frequently had a whole hour to spare on his clock."

Above: Contestants at Nottingham 1946.                                                                                         Back row l - r: Gabriel Wood, Reginald Broadbent, Philip Milner-Barry, A.R.B., Barry Wood.                            Front: Bob Wade, Frank Parr, William Winter, Robert Combe, Hugh Alexander, Harry Golombek, Gerald Abrahams.

Before the war, A.R.B. had formed a friendship with the Dutch player Lodewijk Prins, based not only on their chess but a common love of playing the piano, and through that he developed several contacts with the Netherlands chess world. In January 1947, for example, Liverpool Chess Club played a two-leg match against a team from Amsterdam. The Liverpool paper reported the home leg thus.

"The picture (right) shows a study in concentration at Radiant House, Liverpool, yesterday, during Liverpool Chess Club's second match against a visiting team from Amsterdam. On the left is Amsterdam's leading player Mr. Th. J. Schelfhout, and on the right is Mr. A. R. B. Thomas, Liverpool's leading player. Opening their programme on Saturday night at the British Council Centre, Amsterdam were beaten by 12 - 4, but in the return match yesterday, against a rearranged Liverpool team, the Amsterdam side ran them to a much closer decision, losing by the odd game 9 - 8.

The Dutch team of 17 players were welcomed by the president of the Liverpool Chess Club, Mr. J. C. Bryson, and they presented their opponents with specially inscribed scoring pads as a memento of their visit.

G. T. Crown, Liverpool's 17 year old player, for whom a big future is predicted, won both his games".

Young Gordon Crown's potential was indeed immense. That summer he was admitted to the British Championship at Harrogate at short notice to fill the vacancy left by the late withdrawal of the current champion, R. F. Combe, and came within a whisker of creating a second sensation, when he came clear 3rd behind joint winners Broadbent and Golombek. Later that year, however, he went into hospital for a routine appendicitis operation, but his diabetes caused complications which proved fatal. The chess world was stunned. In time he would certainly have become a World Championship candidate.

Throughout the post war years, Andrew was able to fit a regular pattern of chess into his holiday periods, starting with Hastings after Christmas, the West of England Congress each Easter and the British Championships each August, with over 100 points accumulated at both Hastings and the British. At weekends there were county matches, (17 for Lancs and about 63 for Devon), British Championship Qualifiers, National Club Championship matches for Exeter etc.

At Easter 1947, the second West of England Championship, under the auspices of the newly-created West of England Chess Union, was held at Bristol. It was a simple 7 round, All-Play-All tournament, involving 8 of the best players in the area, 5 of them Devonians by birth or residence.

A.R.B. finished well ahead of the field, the only one not to lose a game.

The keenness of the new association's executive members led them to produce a small booklet containing all the games, making a fine souvenir of the event. A.R.B. sent a copy to Holland inscribed "To my friend & chess-master, L. Prins, August 1947. A. R. B. Thomas". Strangely, this same copy was recently unwittingly returned to Devon when it was purchased by the writer on the internet, sight unseen.

Above: The competitors at the 1947 WECU Championship, showing A.R.B. in characteristic pose playing against D. V. Hooper, with the owner of the restaurant venue looking on.                                                             L - r: H. V. Trevenen; H. Wilson-Osborne (WECU President); R. A. (Ron) Slade; Rowena Bruce; Ron Bruce; H. V. (Harry) Mallison; Chris Sullivan; C. Welch (Controller); F. E. A. (Frank) Kitto.

At Easter 1949, the first of a new sort of congress was organised at Southsea, one organised on the new Swiss System. That year A. R. B. was committed to the West of England Championship, where he came joint 2^nd with Ron Bruce behind H. V. Trevenen.

The following year, after coming 3^rd= equal in the WECU Championships at Weymouth behind Trevenen (again) and Poolake, over the Easter weekend in early April 1950, he was attracted by the growing popularity of the new event and entered the 2^nd Stevenson Memorial Tournament at Southsea later in the month, with the chance of playing Bogoljubow or Bisguier. Tartakower, too, was a regular competitor at Southsea, and as Thomas recalled "stayed in the same boarding house each year where, in intervals between playing chess, resumed copying out the Encylopaedia Brittanica from where he had left off the preceding year". The sensation of this event was the 16 year old Jonathan Penrose who came within an ace of winning 1^st prize, beating ARB in Round 2. None the less, Golombek observed that both Barden and Thomas, who drew with each other, "were players who deserved a rather higher place in view of the consistently good chess they produced throughout the tournament."

Thomas returned to Southsea in 1951. Reporting this 3^rd Southsea Congress, Golombek made it clear he was not enamoured of the new pairing system, as it savoured of "the popularity of the football pools" and "appealed to the sadistic element present in audiences as a substitute for public executions". Whether it served A.R.B. well depends on how one looks at it. Golombek noted "Thomas had the hardest tournament of any and met all the grim top trio - Rossolimo, Tartakower and O'Kelly. With a little more luck he would have figured in the prize list". In fact, he came 14^th = out of the 44 entrants, but surely wouldn't have swapped his win over Tartakower for a share of the £10.00 4^th prize if that meant avoiding the top players. This game appeared in Tartakower & Du Mont's book 100 Master Games of Modern Chess and, of course, in his own book Chess For The Love Of It.

He played at Hastings over the Christmas period 1950 - 51, and got a draw against the tournament winner Wolfgang Unzicker. Reviewing the game in his chess column in The Field, Julius Du Mont felt moved to say "Thomas is worthy of a place in an England team, an honour which has not yet been vouchsafed him".

The team that was eventually selected on their way to Amsterdam. l - r Barden, Clarke, Penrose, Wade, Golombek & Alexander. Should Thomas have been there?

It was probably of little consolation to Thomas, but exactly the same thing happened to Reginald Broadbent, definitely selected to play, as a double British Champion (1948 & 1950) and the highest-rated British player at the time, but he too was unable to take up his place due to his work as a civil servant with the GPO in London. His response was to give up active chess completely, his only connection with the game from then on being writing a weekly chess column for the Western Morning News for 32 years between 1955 and 1987, shortly before his death at the age of 82. He wrote the Saturday column comprising a problem and annotated game, while J. E. Jones (Oct. 1953 to Aug. '63) followed by Ken Bloodworth (Sept. 1963 to March '97) wrote a Wednesday column with more local news.

So team selection for the 1954 Olympiad was traumatic for more than one player. A small consolation for A.R.B. was winning the prize for Board 1 in the British Correspondence Team Championship 1954/55.

For the British Championships at Felixstowe in 1949, the BCF adopted the new Swiss system, enabling a far greater number of competitors to take part. It was still not easy, but Thomas now had a well-defined route to qualification through the West of England Union's qualifying group, an opportunity he seldom passed up. In fact, his record in the British Championship in the 1950s, and '60s was a model of consistency, as the record shows.

Competitors and officials attending the British Championships at Plymouth were received by the Lord and Lady Mayoress, Ald. & Mrs. L. F. Paul, at a reception in the City Art Gallery. Picture right: A.R.B. is presented to Mrs. Paul. From the Western Morning News.

See appendixes for a full record of his British Championship scores.

Throughout the post war years, Andrew was able to fit a regular pattern of chess into his holiday periods, starting with Hastings after Christmas, the West of England Congress each Easter and the British Championships each August, with over 100 points accumulated at both Hastings and the British. At weekends there were county matches, (17 for Lancs and about 63 for Devon).

In August 1965 the British Championships were held at the Grammar School in Hastings, and it must have been general knowledge that A.R.B. was nearing the milestone of winning 100 points in the top event, for when that day arrived, the then President of the BCF, Victor Soanes, sent a briefly-worded congratulatory telegram to A.R.B. at the venue - "Congratulations on reaching 100 points - Soanes".

An Eventful Retirement.

In 1965, Andrew's brother, Tristan, who had become a senior engineer with British Road Services based in Leeds, died at the age of 58. About this time, his sister, Moira, who had also entered teaching, became Headmistress of West Bank School for Girls, in Sidmouth.

In the summer of 1966, A. R. B. completed his four decades at the chalk face and duly retired. Freed from the constraints of a school timetable, he did the sensible thing and travelled widely. He now had the time to take up some offices within chess, to put something back into the game he loved. He became Hon. Treasurer of the West of England Union and was later elected President of the Devon County Chess Association (1974 - 76). He also acted as an adjudicator for Devon competitions, an important and time-consuming process in those days of unfinished games and unresolved matches.

A. R. B. Thomas died recently at the age of 81 (sic). His life is well described in the 1973 book Chess For the Love Of It (RKP) where he relates that he was a member of the Liverpool club in its great days, was at Cambridge 1923 - 26 and then became a public school master in the West Country. He took part in the British Championship on more than 20 occasions, and had successes at Hastings, where he should have beaten Unzicker in an exciting Evans Gambit in 1950-51. He was a great amateur with an aggressive style, and much more at home in open positions than in more sophisticated systems. He turned out for Devon for decades and won the West of England Championship at least eight times. During his long retirement he also wrote Chess Techniques. (RKP 1975)

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