British Championships, wherever they happened to be.

The extra responsibility seemed to have had little effect on Rowena’s performance; she won or shared the British Ladies Championship a further eight times, making the unbeaten total of eleven titles. And this was in the face of competition from her three great contemporaries – Elaine Pritchard, Ann Sunnucks and Eileen Tranmer.

Year

venue

Shared with

1937

Blackpool

1950

Buxton

1951

Swansea

1954

Nottingham

1955

Aberystwyth

J. Doulton

1959

York

1960

Leicester

1962

Whitby

1963

Bath

1967

Oxford

Dinah Dobson

1969

Rhyl

Dinah Dobson

From 1959 to 1964 the BBC broadcast a series of radio programmes on chess on a Sunday afternoon on their Network 3 channel. It was a magazine type of programme and included players going through their favourite (or worst) game. Rowena’s choice was one from the Plymouth Club Championship which she won with a spectacular mating combination that started with a Queen sacrifice. At the end, sherevealed the name of her opponent; “Well, Black is my long-suffering husband! I was a bit reluctant to choose this particular game but, on the other hand, maybe it could be regarded as a kind of tribute. If he had not been such a capable and patient master all those years ago when he first started giving me lessons, this queen sacrifice would never have occurred.” She was ever ready to give Ron the credit.

The Plymouth Club had always sought to put on simultaneous exhibitions against the great players of the day, from Blackburne in 1888, and including, among others, Lasker, Frank Marshall, Mir Sultan Khan and Koltanowski and in January 1966 it was the turn of Boris Spassky. At home Rowena kept a special chess board the