From the 1960s until the 1980s one of the strongest members of the Club was David Armstrong, who is referred to in Brian Denman's History narrative elsewhere on this website. David's father, Jack Roy Armstrong, was the author of a book on the history of Sussex and was the founder of the open-air museum of timber-framed buildings at Singleton, now known as the Weald and Downland Living Museum. David's family lived on the outskirts of Storrington, by good fortune not far from where a noted English chess player moved to in 1950, when David was in his teens.

   That player was Thomas Francis Lawrence (1871-1953), a seven-times Champion of the City of London Chess Club, and who, although a chess amateur (he worked for the Prudential Assurance Company), had beaten leading players of that era including Pillsbury and Blackburne; had drawn against Chigorin and World Champion Emanuel Lasker; and had represented England in many of the Trans-Atlantic Cable Matches around the start of the 20th century. David was introduced to Lawrence and benefited greatly by playing a number of games with him.

   I first met David in the late 1960s and knew him for almost 50 years. He had been associated with the Club since its days at the Rivoli Cinema, and continued when the Club moved, first to the Connaught Theatre and then to a room at the Dome Cinema, and in the late 1970s to the Chatsworth Hotel.

   In 1975, when the Club still met in a room at the Dome Cinema, David and I competed over a period of several weeks in an unusual match of ten games, in which we both played blindfold at the rate of 25 minutes for all the moves in a game. The result was four wins each and two draws. A satisfying feature was that there was never any dispute as to where the pieces were, despite some of the games reaching 35 moves or more. Game scores were not kept at the time, but I recorded them on returning home, and a few have survived. This is one of David's wins.