Victor Knox, one of the strongest players in the North of England and an England junior international has died aged 56. He was born in the Wirral and was one of Cheshire's leading players from the time he was a teenager, he represented the county for the first time at the age of thirteen. In 1960 he won the British Under 15 Championship and in 1962-63 he played on board one for England in the Glorney Cup and scored 2.5 out of 3.

In 1966 he played in the British Championship for the first time scoring 6.5 points and from 1968 to 1980 he made 13 successive appearances. He played the British a few more times later in his career when strong players still had to go through qualifying events. He scored over 100 points in the British.

Vic won the Cheshire Championship on numerous occasions and was Cheshire junior organiser for five years, building the junior squad into a formidable team. He also assisted in junior training outside Cheshire and I recall quite vividly the insights he brought to the training weekends for juniors at the Bluecoat School in Liverpool in the early seventies.

His aggressive playing style was particularly well suited to the cut and thrust of the weekend Swiss that became increasingly popular in the 1970s. He won numerous congresses in the Northwest, and the Manchester Congress particularly was a happy hunting ground for him. Throughout the 1970s and well into the 1980s he was chess columnist for the Manchester Evening News.