Remembering Comins Mansfield MBE (14-vi-1896 28-iii-1984)

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John Upham
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Remembering Comins Mansfield MBE (14-vi-1896 28-iii-1984)

Post by John Upham » Sun Mar 28, 2021 11:30 am

Remembering Comins Mansfield MBE (14-vi-1896 28-iii-1984)

We remember England's (but not Britain's) first chess grandmaster (1972) who was awarded an MBE in 1976.

He is revered as one of the best problem composers of all time with a large portfolio of high quality work.



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Comins Mansfield MBE (14-vi-1896 28-iii-1984)
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Matt Mackenzie
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Re: Remembering Comins Mansfield MBE (14-vi-1896 28-iii-1984)

Post by Matt Mackenzie » Sun Mar 28, 2021 3:26 pm

Nothing from Golombek in his Encyclopaedia may be because he showed little interest in chess compositions more generally.
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Re: Remembering Comins Mansfield MBE (14-vi-1896 28-iii-1984)

Post by John Upham » Sun Mar 28, 2021 6:58 pm

Matt Mackenzie wrote:
Sun Mar 28, 2021 3:26 pm
Nothing from Golombek in his Encyclopaedia may be because he showed little interest in chess compositions more generally.
Of course I considered that.

HG has entries for various English Problemists plus an extensive section called Problemists which includes such names as John Rice, CM Bent and Harold Lommer to name but a few.

Ignoring a Grandmaster and MBE awardee therefore seems unlikely for the reasons you suggest.

Maybe it goes deeper than that and HG was upset that England's first GM was not an OTB one?

Further to this I quote RH Jones:

"At Paignton, Mansfield seemed to know Milner-Barry quite well, but Golombek kept his distance. It is noticeable that Golombek's Encyclopaedia of Chess (Batsford 1977) is almost unique of its kind in containing no individual entry for Mansfield; even a long 3½ page article on the history of chess problems, which mentions numerous half forgotten composers, contains no reference to him. This is surely no oversight and must be interpreted as some kind of inexplicable snub."

Which suggests I was not imagining my assertion.

Postscript

It turns out that both RH Jones and made the same error in that on page 253 of HGs tome there is a small entry for CM but no entry in the main section (which is what caught me out and maybe RHJ also. ) Thanks to Richard James for pointing this out.
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