C.H. O'D. Alexander-Irish, English and British chess giant: Part1, by James O'Fee

This week Ray Keene in his chess column in THE TIMES will write on the great native player C.H. O'D Alexander. I imagine that one stimulus has been a recently-published article on Alexander written by Dominic Lawson and published this month referring to a memoir previously officially classified as Secret (a).

"C.H. O'D. Alexander" was the handle that Alexander went under in print, and the name that I and thousands of others knew, but his friends called him "Hugh". In my youth in the 60s and 70s Alexander wrote an always illuminating and entertaining weekly chess column in the SUNDAY TIMES. Among his books on chess, Alexander selected and annotated a third volume of Alekhine's late games, published in 1959 (b); and an impressive account of the Fischer-Spassky match published by Penguin in 1972 (c). Alexander was one of the great figures of the British chess of my youth.

"C.H. O'D." stood for "Conel Hugh O'Donel". Alexander was born in Ireland and spent his early years there. His father was a Professor at University College, Cork. An article below tells us that he went to school in Londonderry [I look forward to readers supplying more information]. Because of the dates, this must have been a prep school, for Alexander's father died when he was only 11. His mother then chose to take the family to Birmingham, where Alexander attended King Edward's School.

In the title I've described Alexander as "Irish, English and British". He was Irish by birth and early life. He completed his education in England and represented England with distinction in several Chess Olympiads. Finally, Alexander won the British Chess Championship twice, in 1938 and 1956.

There is a book The Best Games of C.H. O'D. Alexander, Golombek and Hartston (1976) to which I don't unfortunately have access.

The Irish Chess Union website has two articles on Alexander;

(1) http://www.icu.ie/articles/display.php?id=30

Hugh Alexander
by Enda Rohan (September 1998)

Alexander could well be described as the greatest Irish player of all time. In his time he won against many strong players, including Botvinnik, Euwe and Bronstein. He wrote to me in 1957 saying: "I do think of myself as an Irishman, not an Englishman, in spite of my long time here".

I first met him in Amsterdam 1954. He had a hand in cracking the German secret codes during the war and was not allowed to go to the Olympiad in Moscow 1956 for security reasons. We had many friendly arguments during the 1957 Dublin Zonal where there was great local interest in his performance, though officially he was representing England. He insisted that the policy of trying to revive the Irish language was a mistake.

(2) http://www.icu.ie/articles/display.php?id=31

Hugh Alexander 1909-1974
by B.H.Wood (March 1974) (d)

Vivid Character

The death of Conel Hugh O'Donel Alexander deprived English chess of one of its most vivid characters. Born 19th April 1909 [in Cork, ed.], he learnt chess at the age of 8. From a Londonderry college he went to King Edward's School, Birmingham, where as a schoolboy he won the Birmingham Post cup, which carries with it the unofficial championship of Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire. Going on to Cambridge, he not only won the University championship four years in succession, but picked up first-class honours. He won the British championship in 1938.

Buenos Aires Boat

In 1939 I found myself on a boat with him bound for the Chess Olympiad in Buenos Aires where he was English team captain. Other distinguished members of the team were Sir George Thomas, P.S. Milner-Barry and Harry Golombek. War broke out after about six rounds. With typical determination, Alexander jettisoned chess for patriotism, caught a boat home, volunteered for service on disembarking, and within a few weeks had attained the rank of colonel in British Intelligence. He remained attached to Intelligence and the Foreign Office until his retirement a few months ago. As a curious consequence of this commitment, though he settled in to the team captaincy for the British Chess Federation in the biennial Olympiads and participated in many chess events abroad, he was never allowed to travel anywhere behind the Iron Curtain.

Radio Match

His fame certainly did, however. In the radio match, Britain v USSR in 1946, the most important event in British chess for a decade before and after, he found himself pitted against Mikhail Botvinnik, then at the height of his powers and destined to hold the world championship for 14 years. The first game he lost; the second he won in superb style. His great adversary was outplayed.

Hastings

He had some great years at Hastings. In 1954 a 120 move victory over Bronstein (see picture) (e) in a queen and pawn endgame stretching over 13 hours through 3 days earned headlines in the national press unequalled until the Fischer-Spassky furore of 1972, won him first equal place and started him with a chess column in the Sunday Times. He was level with Bronstein, above O'Kelly, Matanovic, Olafsson, Teschner, Tolush, Tartakover and Wade. Hastings illustrated Alexander's weaknesses as well as his strengths. Twice he won the premier tournament there, only to finish among the tail-enders the year after. Only once more was he to win the British Championship; in a rather weak field, entering at the last minute with typical opportunism.

Mathematician

He was a brilliant conversationalist and speaker, a fine bridge player, a master mathematician (an expert on codes), and a first-class journalist and writer. Among varied other interests were croquet and philately. He threw himself wholeheartedly into anything he did. His organization, The Friends of Chess, provided generous financial support for a wide range of chess events. A few days before his death he was full of plans for the future, including a big History of British Chess. He burnt himself out. The world of chess is a poorer and duller place without him.

Notes

(a) See The Enigma of Hugh Alexander, by Dominic Lawson, Friday, September 25. 2009

(b) Alekhine's Best Games of Chess 1938-1945, Chosen and Annotated by C.H. O'D Alexander, Bell, London, 1959

(c) Fischer v. Spassky Reykjavik 1972, C.H. O'D. Alexander, Penguin, 1972

(d) B. (Baruch) H. Wood was the founder and longtime Editor of CHESS magazine. The magazine was produced and published in the former railway station of Sutton Coldfield and carried the inevitable byline "CHESS, Sutton Coldfield, England (always sufficient address)".

(e) David Bronstein had recently (1951) drawn a World Championship Match with Botvinnik and was clearly at the peak of his powers. The rumour was that David Bronstein was a cousin of Lev Bronstein, the birth name of Leon Trotsky, but that the chess authorities had protected him from Stalin's purges because of his chess prowess. I had the pleasure of meeting Bronstein once, in Hastings in 1991. The collapse of the Soviet Union had ended restrictions on travel to the West, and Bronstein was competing in the second grandmaster tournament,

To be continued