Boris Schapiro

Boris Schapiro (22 August 1909 – 1 December 2002) was a British international bridge player. He was a Grandmaster of the World Bridge Federation, and the only player to have won both the Bermuda Bowl (the world championship for national teams) and the World Senior Pairs championship. He won the European teams championship on four occasions as part of the British team.

Schapiro was born in Riga, Latvia (then part of the Russian Empire) into a prosperous family of Jewish traders. They emigrated at the time of the Russian Revolution, when he was eight years old, and soon settled in England. He was educated at Clifton College and Bradford Technical College in England and at various universities, including the Sorbonne in Paris.

After graduating, Schapiro joined the family horse trading and meat business and worked there until his forties, when he retired to capitalise on his love of gambling by becoming the banker of a baccarat syndicate at Crockford's gaming club in London. He was fluent in Russian, German and French, and used those linguistic skills in the Army Intelligence Corps during World War II.

In 1935, while he was working in Hamburg, his fluency in German led to his being chosen as the interpreter for Viscount Castlerosse when the latter travelled to Berlin to research an article for the Daily Express. In a restaurant, a group of Brownshirts mistook Castlerosse for a Jew and Schapiro for a non-Jew, and abused Castlerosse for drinking with an Aryan. A fight broke out, and as a result Schapiro spent two nights in prison, after which he hastily returned to Britain.

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