I refer to The Argus of Tuesday July 1 and your photograph of a group of chess players dated about 1936.

The photo was probably taken during the Brighton Dupree schoolboys competition held annually at the end of December and lasting until early January.

The date of the photograph was therefore probably January or December 1936.

In 1933 Col Sir William Thomas Dupree left a large sum of money in his will to be used for young chess players in Brighton and Portsmouth.

Junior competitions were held once a year in those towns and in Brighton the first prize was £100, a remarkable sum in those days.

The competition lasted in Brighton until about the late 1990s, though the prizes had barely been increased to take in line inflation by that time.

It is likely that there is only one person still alive in this country who might be able to identify some of the players in the photograph.

He is R Hugh Storr-Best, who nowadays would be in his late nineties if he is still alive.

He may himself be in the photograph. He was still alive at the end of last year and was living in Petersfield.

Brian Denman

Sussex Chess Archivist