How I almost killed Jonathan Penrose

Late in November one of the giants of British chess (as Nigel Short described him) sadly passed away, taking with him a record which is likely never to be broken. In his best years Dr. Jonathan Penrose OBE (pictured above) won the British Chess Championship for a record ten times, while on the international stage he twice defeated former World Champion Dr. Max Euwe, had future World Champion Bobby Fischer on the ropes, before conceding a draw, and, most memorably of all, was the first British player to defeat a reigning World Champion (Mikhail Tal) since Joseph Henry Blackburne beat Emanuel Lasker in the great tournament of London 1899. 

Many other illustrious opponents also fell victim to Penrose’s vigorous attacking style, including world championship hopefuls, such as Efim Bogolyubov, Xavielly Tartakower and Bent Larsen. In the UK, of course, Penrose dominated those luminaries of his own and earlier generations, including Harry Golombek, Bob Wade, Leonard Barden, Peter Clarke, John Littlewood and Bill Hartston. Penrose’s forte was the attack, especially against the Sicilian Defence (1.e4 c5) and the counterattack, using the Hypermodern Defence with an early …g6 against virtually any White opening. 

Penrose gained the title of International Master with relative ease, but in the days before arithmetical ratings were introduced by FIDE statistician Dr. Arpad Elo, it was much more onerous a task to gain the Grandmaster Title, which could only be earned through facing international opposition. By concentrating on winning the British Championship, Penrose cut off this route to promotion, since the championship fields lacked Grandmasters to overcome. Nowadays, of course, the British Championship has sufficient Grandmasters entering to surmount this obstacle. 

In spite of his astonishing results in the National Championship, Penrose was only to acquire the title of Grandmaster Emeritus in 1993, at the relatively late age of 60, and at a time when his nervous system had long since led to his retirement from over the board chess combat. To maintain his interest in chess, Penrose turned his talent to Correspondence Chess (chess played by post), acquiring the Correspondence Grandmaster title, and rising to become for a time the world’s most highly ranked postal chess warrior. Indeed, he led England to the Gold Medals in the 9th Correspondence Olympiad which ran, at snail mail pace, from 1982–1987.

Penrose came from a highly talented family, with one brother winning a Nobel Prize in Science. Indeed, he had a fascinating family history. His brothers, Sir Roger Penrose and Oliver Penrose, are both physicists. Sir Roger won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity. His maternal grandfather was the physiologist John Beresford Leathes, and his maternal grandmother was the Russian–Jewish concert pianist Sonia Marie Natanson. His great-grandfather was the Rev. Stanley Leathes, Professor of Hebrew at King’s College London, whose wife Matilda (née Butt) was a descendant of a Dr. Butt who was a physician to Henry VIII. His family history certainly supports the idea that there is a mathematics-music-chess connection.

His uncle, Sir Roland Penrose, also enjoyed a colourful career, as artist, modern art collector and patron, friend of Picasso and many other artists and expert on camouflage during the Second World War. Roland was married to the war photographer Lee Miller,  famous, amongst many other achievements, for being photographed after the Nazi defeat in Hitler’s bath. 

A further little-publicised fact, according to my understanding of Talmudic doctrine, is that the line of descent from Jonathan Penrose’s maternal grandmother means that Penrose joins that distinguished group of Anglo-Jewish chess stars, including Gerald Abrahams, Harry Golombek, Jon Speelman, Jonathan Mestel and Bill Hartston. 

Professionally, Dr. Jonathan Penrose lectured on Psychology at University level, and never aspired, like Golombek, Wade and Barden, to earn his living from chess. Part of this reluctance to commit himself to chess as a career, was his nervous disposition which preferred to regard chess as an intellectual exercise, rather than a fight in the mould of Emanuel Lasker. This nervous aspect of his character nearly led to his accidental death at my hands, fifty years before his time had come.

In 1974 I was having lunch in the restaurant of London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, when an elderly lady at an adjacent table collapsed and died in the presence of all those dining. Later that year at the Clare Benedict Tournament in Menorca, a gentleman in the Cala Galdana restaurant, where I was once again enjoying lunch, keeled over and collapsed. I rushed to his aid, simultaneously calling out for a doctor. “ Es un medico en la casa? ” I called out in halting and quite possibly defective Spanish. Fortunately my summons was answered by International Chess Master Dr. Ricardo Calvo, who performed the Heimlich Manoeuvre (as it was then known) and resuscitated the unfortunate victim, before it was too late.

Before my experiences in London and Menorca, I had been competing in the Chess Olympiad or Team Tournament at Siegen, Germany, 1970. The time had come for the British Chess Federation to face the team from Andorra. The Andorrans were widely regarded as joke opposition at that time, and, sure enough, I won my game against a fairly clueless opponent, without too much trouble. 

Having finished my game, I was observing Penrose’s efforts against the Andorran top board. He was a master strength player called Ulvestad, not a native Andorran but a Swedish/American import, far superior in strength to his native born team mates. Nevertheless, Penrose seemed to have everything under control, when he rose from the board, while Ulvestad was contemplating his next move, and whispered to me: “I have just blundered and I am going to lose.”

I took a look; unfortunately he was right. I turned round, just in time to see Penrose collapse onto the ground. Physically he was small and light in stature, so I literally picked him up and planted him bolt upright in a handily adjacent empty chair. This seemed to me to be the sensible thing to do, but to my intense horror, his face started to turn green and then black. Switching from suspect Spanish to German, where I was on safer ground, I called out: “ Gibt es einen Arzt im Hause? ”

Fortunately my summons was answered, and a steward, evidently adept at first aid, leapt across the barrier separating players from the public, and said: “What you are doing is killing him!” Together we replaced Penrose on the ground, horizontally, and to my great relief, normal colour began to return to his face. Apparently, placing him bolt upright had drained the blood from his head and would have been imminently fatal. He was probably within minutes of death at worst, or permanent brain damage, at best.  The lesson I gained from my experiences was to learn how to call for a doctor in many different languages, rather than attempting to save any further unfortunates who collapsed in my presence. 

This week’s links: the World Championship in Dubai. Magnus Carlsen has easily retained his title against Ian Nepomniachtchi, after the latter collapsed in the second half. The final score was 7.5 to 3.5: Carlsen won four games with seven draws, but “Nepo” failed to win a single game. Not since Capablanca defeated Lasker a century ago has a world championship match been so one-sided.

Next, the Penrose victory  against the reigning World Champion of the day, Mikhail Tal. Penrose’s attacking formation subsequently formed the template for a regulation onslaught against the Modern Benoni Defence, a Tal favourite with which he had previously crushed such luminaries as Gligoric, Geller, Averbakh and Donner. 

Finally, the near fatal game  between Penrose and Ulvestad, during the course of which I nearly killed the ten times British Champion. 

Amongst Penrose’s greatest successes were wins in the British Championships of 1958-63 and again from 1966-69, both inclusive. He shared first prize at Hastings 1952/53 and an outstanding performance on top board for the British Chess Federation team at the Olympiad of Lugano 1968, where he won ten games, drew five and lost none. Indeed, in the chess Olympiads of both Varna 1962 and Lugano 1968, Penrose won the individual silver medal on top board. 

Dr. Jonathan Penrose OBE 1933–2021 RIP

Raymond Keene ’s latest book  Fifty Shades of Ray: Chess in the year of the Coronavirus, containing some of his best pieces from TheArticle, is now available from  Blackwell’s .