English Chess Forum

Remembering BH Wood MSc FCS OBE (13-vii-1909 04-iv-1989)

BH was one of THE most significant figures in the development of British Chess and certainly one of the most hard working and most loved by the chess public.

Very good piece, thank you. I especially enjoyed Bernard's contribution.
I always got on very well with BH and Marjorie, especially during the few months I lived in Birmingham, and their daughter Peggy (Clarke) was also a lovely person. I never met their sons.
I can imagine, though, that people found BH hard to work for. American correspondence chess organiser Bob Karch was another who didn't last long; he helped run one of the "Chess" festivals in Southport but I don't recall what year (late 1960s or early 1970s).
BH's involvement in correspondence chess organisation is the one area that is only skimmed over in your article. The crosstable of the 1944/45 British Correspondence Chess Championship can be found in my history of CC. The book also covers the start of the Postal Chess Club and BH's brief involvement with international correspondence chess during the late 1940s when ICCA (the precursor of ICCF) nearly split because of a clash between BH and Swedish organiser Erik Larsson.

Is it really correct that he was paying 1/9 per magazine to have them printed and then selling them for 1/- including postage?

(1/9 in 1935 would be £6.44 today, which seems very expensive.)

While aware of his reputation as a demanding employer I have to say that, as a contributor to CHESS during the 1960s, I always found BH very easy to get on with - but, of course, I was freelance and not an employee. We also met in the British championship in 1965 in an entertaining game where I know we were each relieved to get a half-point after a wild 30 moves or so. It would be hard to overstate his contribution to British chess.

I have good reason to be grateful to BHW. Having been sent to boarding school from the age of 7 I arrived at my next school at 13, not even realising that chess clubs existed. Fortunately on the staff there was a club player (actually the late John Herring, father of recent ECF Finance Chairman, Tim Herring) who not only ran the school chess club but, crucially, showed us copies of 'Chess' magazine. This led me to join BH's Junior Postal Chess Club, an ideal activity for a boarding school pupil with no chance of joining a proper chess club in term time. It was quite a thrill at that age to see one's name on the results pages. I think we were in APA divisions of 10 or 12 (or perhaps 6 or 7 with two games v each opponent). My housemaster got used to the scruffy window envelopes arriving in the post every day. I remember one opponent was Bill Linton, stalwart of Mushrooms CC. I am sure those postal games helped a lot with my development, so thanks, BH.

I am fairly sure also that we had a school match v somewhere where Peggy, BH's daughter, was on the staff. From my scorebook I can't tell whether that would have been King's Peterborough or Peterborough County Girls.

Ian Thompson wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 04, 2021 11:47 am

Is it really correct that he was paying 1/9 per magazine to have them printed and then selling them for 1/- including postage?

Is this like Milo Minderbinder buying and selling eggs?

JustinHorton wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 04, 2021 2:40 pm

Ian Thompson wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 04, 2021 11:47 am

Is it really correct that he was paying 1/9 per magazine to have them printed and then selling them for 1/- including postage?

Is this like Milo Minderbinder buying and selling eggs?

I suspect that BH knew he had to give something away to get something else back and he knew he had to operate at a loss before he could scale up the subscribers to return a profit.

His pitch on Dragon's Den in 1935 would have been most entertaining!

All the Dragons would have told him that did not have a viable business and for that reason each of them "would be out".

Five photographs of a B. H. Wood simul in Wales

http://hdl.handle.net/10107/1493593

What would you say his best game was?

"British trade unions had a different view of course, in pre-Thatcher days, and BH had some tricky obstacles to overcome in this field." - Bernard Cafferty, quoted in John Upham's article.

There are references upthread to BH being a demanding employer, but this really deserves a little more attention.

Long time subscribers will remember a period when more than one issue of CHESS contained a reference to its having been delayed by industrial action.

Then one issue came with an insert, "To Our Readers", which had clearly been put into the envelopes out of sight of his now unionised staff. Unless my memory is at fault, BH described one of his employees, "G", as a communist agitator.

I would be interested to know whether anyone here still has a copy of this document, or knows of its being available in any chess library. I would like to think that a copy is being or will be preserved for posterity somewhere.

This must have been in the late 1970s, as I remember referring to the episode at a management training course in 1981. The chess connection was that the course lecturer, Jerome Ripp, was a strong club player who in his previous employment had been a fellow member of the Insurance Chess Club. I lost touch with him after the course.

Tim Harding wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 04, 2021 11:05 am

I always got on very well with BH and Marjorie, especially during the few months I lived in Birmingham [...]

What year was that? Were you ever a member of Sutton Coldfield Chess Club?

BHW wrote about chess for the Telegraph for years and its fair to say he was a good fit with them politically speaking.

I remember the 1967 Botwinnik simul tour as I played in one of them. I'm sure Botwinnik enjoyed the trip and presumably some western currency. I seem to recall that there was supposed to be a limit of 25 boards, but BH tried to sneak a couple of extras in. What he didn't know (or maybe care about) was that Botwinnik rotated his first move, something like Nf3, e4, d4, c4 and b3, so if he reached the last board and it wasn't 1.b3, he would mutter to BH, "There are more!"

BH ran Guernsey a few times very well, and his magazine was always lively. He obviously enjoyed being a bit controversial, but he did a lot of good work and it was always nice to talk to him, even when I was mildly grumbling about something he had said in "Chess". He obviously rattled a few cages, but some time after his "fat gaolbird" comment about Morry, I did see the two of them at Hastings, and BH hailed him in a friendly manner, and seemed to get a friendly response.

Morry got his letters published in Chess come the 1970s/early 80s, so it seems pretty likely there was some sort of reconciliation between them.

Matt Mackenzie wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 04, 2021 10:16 pm

Morry got his letters published in Chess come the 1970s/early 80s, so it seems pretty likely there was some sort of reconciliation between them.

It must have been earlier than you suggest. The Malypetrova v Horner incident at Hastings and the Harman v Fuller incident at Whitby were both in the late 1960s and Wood published edited but still extensive comments from Morry on each of them. I presume that Whitby was a Festival organised by Wood at which Morry was arbiting.