Club History

Part 1: The beginning by John Carleton

As all chess historians agree 1972 was a sensational year in the development of the great game. Atticus Chess Club (née Kirkdale Chess Club) played its first match in the autumn of that year, a 4-3 defeat at the hands of Liverpool 3 in Division 2 of the Liverpool and District Chess League.

On the face of it this was not a great start, we did have some excuses to offer: we were not at full strength. Our bottom two boards on the night were two rugby players each promised a couple of pints of best bitter for turning out plus a very attractive bonus again alcoholic in content and also measured in imperial units of capacity. Sadly the bonus scheme was not needed and the rest of the team played rather poorly.

Thus we started season 1973-4 in Division One as Division Two champions and Knock-Out trophy holders. Our second season saw a new venue, Atticus bookshop, and hence the name Atticus. We also got some new blood; Tom Bimpson returned from working in France to join up with former University colleagues and John Ripley moved across to us as promised. And so the second chapter in the history of Atticus Chess Club began.

Part 2: What’s in a name? The origins of Atticus by David Robertson

Renaming the club after our first successful year was inevitable. We were already drawing members from across Liverpool. And anyway, playing conditions at the Kirkdale Community Centre, never ideal, deteriorated further when they kicked us out in favour of activities involving organised physical violence. So ended chess in Kirkdale. Given the goings-on there these days, that’s not about to change anytime soon.

So the search for new premises began. I’d just started as a lecturer at the FE college in Clarence Street, and during my lunch hour, used to browse through the stock of a small second-hand bookshop next door. It’s a sandwich bar now. But in 1973, it was Atticus Books, a struggling attempt by Tom, its owner, to raise the quality of second-hand books above that of a car-boot sale. We got talking, and eventually reached a deal that allowed us to use his upstairs room for matches. We played there throughout 1973-74, taking the name ‘Atticus’ as part of the deal.

The upstairs room was extremely small and very old. Before each match, we would carefully clear piles of books from the tables. Then, when sixteen people sat down to play, the only comfort to be drawn from the squash was that collective body heat compensated for the minimal heating on offer. Why minimal heating? Because Tom, the owner, didn’t want us burning down his livelihood. Witty folk from visiting teams, noting the chill amid the books, offered to incinerate a few. Oh, how we chuckled!

If, during the match, you felt your game going downhill, it probably was. The building was so old that the floor sloped alarmingly. We couldn’t have had any structural engineers in the team because no one gave a thought to loading sixteen chess-players onto these dodgy timbers.

As the season headed into winter, some matches had to be played by candle-light. This was the era of the 3-day week, the miners’ strike, and Government restrictions on the use of electricity. Suddenly, there would be a power cut, complete blackout until someone scrambled for a candle. Huddled over the board in  overcoats, surrounded by musty tomes, and crammed together by candle-light, we looked like nothing so much as a bunch of Dickensian clerks bent to their grim labours. Despite everything, or maybe because of it, we won the 1st Division that season, our first as Atticus - and without burning down the shop. Happy days!

So why was ‘Atticus Books’ so named? There is a well-known second-hand bookshop of that name in New York with branches in other American cities. Presumably Tom thought he’d continue the tradition in Liverpool. These bookshops take their name from Titus Pomponius Atticus (110-32 BC), a scholar and close friend of Cicero, the Roman statesman and orator. Titus Pomponius took the name ‘Atticus’ from his love of Athens, and after publishing Cicero’s work, came to be regarded as the world’s first publisher-cum-librarian. A century or so later, Herodes Atticus (101-177) continued the cultural tradition with his work on Plato. Thereafter, St Atticus makes his mark as  “a tireless enemy of heretics”, finding time to write ‘On Virginity’ before dying as Pope in 425.

Skipping quickly over the next one and a half millennia (and a clutter of entries in Google), the next famous Atticus was a prize stallion, presumably not too impressed by the writings of St Atticus. This American champion racehorse sired 27 winners, not bad for a horse, although not as many as Atticus Chess Club of course.

Then we have Atticus Finch, the kindly lawyer in Harper Lee’s famous novel, ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’, played by Gregory Peck in the film of the book. Atticus Finch has been voted the greatest heroic character of the past century with Hannibal Lector, the worst, which leads neatly into Atticus, the modern clothing outlet. This sells Death’s Head t-shirts and other morbid apparel for fun-loving Goths, ideal garb when playing the Sveshnikov.

We haven’t always been plain ‘Atticus’ though. We spent 1974-75 as ‘Atticus Red Star’, or at least we had score-sheets overprinted as such. The ‘Red Star’ element was added by the more left-wing members of the club seeking to be on the side of the angels in the forthcoming Workers’ Revolution. The name was adopted in a truly democratic manner - by not inviting dissent - and was tolerated by other club members with the benign indulgence usually reserved for toddlers. In the end ‘The Workers’, having re-elected Harold Wilson in 1974, decided that was sufficiently revolting, so the ‘Red Star’ title lapsed with the revolution when the score-sheets ran out.

Actually, the title lapsed when the printer refused to print any more. Our score-sheets were overprinted by ‘Chess’ magazine in Sutton Coldfield, owned and edited by the dedicated but formidable Baruch H Wood. ‘BH’, as he was universally known, was the longstanding chess correspondent of the ‘Daily Telegraph’. Never were the politics of correspondent and newspaper more perfectly matched.

Ever the entrepreneur, ‘BH’ would hire out his print-room as a weekend rendezvous for teams in the National Club Championship meeting halfway. On one occasion, we arrived to play a strong Streatham team in the semi-finals. ‘BH’ asked me what the ‘Red Star’ signified. I was delighted by his interest, polishing for his benefit the bit about underpaid print workers throwing off the yoke of rapacious capitalists. His face darkened; his lips pursed with scorn; and I thought for a minute he was about to throw us off the premises, or throw a fit. Then he remembered we hadn’t yet paid for the room. We never dared ask him to print any more though.

But the club was moving on, literally. By the start of the 1974-75 season, Atticus had outgrown the bookshop. So, homeless again, taking nothing but the name, and dragging our equipment behind us, we set off to scour the watering holes of Liverpool, looking for somewhere to play. It’s hard to believe, looking back, but within three years Atticus would be National Club Champions.

The climb to the summit is the next part of our story.