By Martin Smith -- 23 October 2020
Streatham and Brixton Chess Club took a trip down memory lane back in September 2020 when, as the club’s unofficial historian, I gave an online talk to the Lambeth Heritage Festival about the origins and early years of the Brixton and the Streatham clubs in the late C19th.
It’s now on YouTube, thanks to the Streatham Society:
There’s no chess as such in the talk, so don’t expect any whizz-bang games from the Romantic Era. Instead it focusses on the places and people tied up with the formation of the two clubs (they amalgamated in 1946). It takes in, as well, some of the chess personalities who passed through our neighbourhood even though, for better or worse, they didn’t join.