My Life and Times. Compton Mackenzie.

My Life and Times, Vol 8; 1939-1946. Compton Mackenzie. 1963

Page 16:

In the December 1938 number of The Billiards Player I had written an article about the special pool and slosh we played every Sunday evening at Suidheachan. I was astonished (and gratified) to receive a letter in January from Mr John Bissett, the Chairman of the Billiards Association and Control Council, inviting me to present the trophy to the winner of the World’s Professional Snooker Championship at Thurston’s Hall on March 4th.

About this time an article in The Field claimed that Snooker was invented at ‘The Shop’ – the R.M.A. Woolwich. This roused the indignation of Sir Neville Chamberlain then the same age as I am myself as I write these words. Mr Bissett put him in touch with me and I was able to promise the old veteran that I would give the true facts in my speech at Thurston’s. Later I wrote another article for The Billiards Player telling the full story; . . . I look back to that evening in Leicester Square with a sigh for what was, and is no more. Sir Joshua Reynolds’s studio is gone; the Alhambra is gone; Thurston’s Hall is gone. In memory I am sitting again with various Savilians on that tier of comfortable seats rising above the green cloth at which Joe Davis, the supreme snooker player of all time, is bewitching us with his artistry.

At ten o’clock the session was over. I made my speech and presented the trophy. Then we Savilians asked Joe Davis if he would come back with us to Brook Street and give his verdict on the volunteer snooker which is the speciality and pride of the Savile. I have never heard who was the originator of that fascinating variant. To our pleasure and faint awe the champion took a cue and give our billiards-table a demonstration of what it was like to be under the sway of a master.