Vera Menchik was 38 when she was killed by a German V1 flying bomb that landed on her home in Clapham. Born in Moscow in 1906 to a Czech father and an English mother, she was in her teens when her family settled in England. Aged 21, she won the first women’s world championship, and defended the title six times in the 1930s; she had two wins against Max Euwe a few years before he became world champion in 1935.
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