Adam Meredith

Adam Theodore "Plum" Meredith (16 June 1913 – 30 January 1976) was a British professional bridge player and world tournament champion.

[5] Fearlessly honest, he refused to claim his ill-health from severe asthma and acute diabetes as a basis to avoid military service for World War II and instead registered as a conscientious objector.

"[4] After the war, he spent months each year in the south of France where the dry climate helped his asthmatic lungs.

When the Ballet Nègre (a creation of Katherine Dunham) came to London "and teetered between success and failure ... he backed it with hard-earned savings he had amassed at bridge".

[6] There, he formed a friendship with Ruth Sherman, a leading American player, who supported his bridge activities and who upon her death in 1965 bequeathed to him the income on the bulk of her $450,000 estate.

Meredith was a key member of the British team "doing as much as anyone to win the world championship match in 1955"[3] – the Bermuda Bowl.

[7] At bridge he liked to seize the initiative early in a match; some of his bidding manoeuvres (which often centred round the spade suit) became legendary.

[13]In his 1976 obituary of Plum, Terence Reese wrote: When I first played at Lederer's in the mid-1930s, Meredith was a handsome youth of 22, though he looked about 17 .