Saturday, November 01, 2025
What a Pity
Otto Skutsch (1906-1990), "Recollections of Scholars I Have Known," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 94 (1992) 387-408 (at 403, on H.J. Rose):
From Kevin Muse:
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He was a wonderful chessplayer. I thought I was reasonably good myself, but every time we played he had me tied up in knots after half a dozen moves. It was many years later that I got rid of the feeling of inferiority which that gave me. It was when Prof. Penrose,67 the father of the British chessmaster, told me that old players would sometimes wonder what had become of young Rose, who had drawn with Capablanca or whoever it was. And when they were told that he had become a Professor of Classics, they would say: "What a pity!"Some chess games of H.J. Rose here.
67 Not identified.
From Kevin Muse:
Your Skutsch anecdote reminded me that the great physicist Roger Penrose is the son of Lionel Penrose the psychiatrist, geneticist, and chess theorist. That must be the one Skutsch talked to about H J Rose. Roger's brother became a chess master.
