Harold Maurice Lommer (Islington 18 November 1904, Valencia, 17 December 1980):

International Judge of Chess Compositions (1956), International Arbiter (1962), International Master of Chess Compositions (1974). “Of German parentage he considered himself to be English; and he was the leading British study composer. He moved to Geneva when he was four years old and his enthusiasm for studies was kindled at the age of twelve when he was shown the Saavedra study; but he began composing only in his late twenties after settling in England. At first he specialized in promotion tasks, and among his several achievements in this field was his prize-winning AUW study in 1933. In later years Lommer also composed

problems, fairy and orthodox, becoming one of a handful who achieved the Babson task. His approach was always artistic, and he considered the mere achieving of a task to be worthless if it were not well done. From the end of the Second World War until 1961, when he retired to Valencia, he was joint proprietor of the Mandrake club in Soho, where chess boards and men were always available and where he revealed the art of studies to many players” (DVH).

“It was in 1942 that I first went to the newly-opened ‘Mandrake’. Many famous names were to be found there O. Bernstein, Mieses, Keres, Wade, the cartoonist 'Vicky', Willie Winter,

B.J. d'Andrade, Friedrich Samisch, for a few, along with the poets, writers and artists, Dylan Thomas, Colquhoun and Macbride, David Gascoyne, Tambimuttu, Costi (the escaped Russian artist), and countless others. A wonderful international intellectual concourse of free spirits

living la vie de Boheme under the magic wand of Harold (Prospero!) Lommer. The magic spell lasted until 1956 when Prospero retired to Spain”. (AD)’.

“It was Harold Lommer who told me the shocking fact that there was no magazine for studies enthusiasts, and who, when I expressed astonishment, said, ‘Why don't you do it?’" The

challenge was accepted, and EG remains as a kind of memorial to him”. “It was Harold who gave me a 'sine die' membership of his Soho club, the Mandrake where, when I knew it, a

call-girl operation worked incongruously alongside the chess (AJR)”.

Source: obituaries in EG no. 64, February 1981 by John Roycroft (AJR), David Hooper (DVH) and Anthony Dickins (AD)