William Hartston | |
|---|---|
| Full name | William Roland Hartston |
| Country | England |
| Born | (1947-08-12)12 August 1947 (age 77) Willesden,Middlesex, England |
| Title | International Master (1973) |
| FIDE rating | 2430 (May 2025) |
| Peak rating | 2485 (January 1979) |
William Roland Hartston (born 12 August 1947) is an English journalist who has written theBeachcomber column in theDaily Express since 1998. He is also achess player who played competitively from 1962 to 1987 and earned a highestElo rating of 2485.[1] He was awarded the titleInternational Master in 1972, but is now best known as a chess author and presenter of the game on television.
Hartston was born inWillesden,Middlesex, England, and attended theCity of London School before studying Mathematics atJesus College, Cambridge.[2][3]
At the 19thChess Olympiad, held atSiegen 1970, he won the gold medal for best score on board 3 (78.1%).[4] He won theBritish Chess Championship in 1973 and 1975. In international competition, he had many strong performances but failed, by the smallest possible margin, to achieve the results required for the title ofInternational Grandmaster. Hartston became the first person to stack the pieces from an entire chess set on top of a single whiterook.[5][6] He studied mathematics atJesus College, Cambridge but did not complete his PhD onnumber theory as he spent too much time playing chess.[7]
From the early 1970s, Hartston made many TV appearances for theBBC,[8][9] usually in the role of expert commentator and analyst on world title matches, includingFischer-Spassky '72,Karpov-Korchnoi '78,Kasparov-Short '93 andKasparov-Anand '95. On December 7, 1990, he was featured in an experimental interactiveBBC2 broadcast calledYour Move, which was hosted byRob Curling and featured grandmasterJon Speelman. In the groundbreaking one-off episode, Speelman was pitted against the audience, who would use a special telephone line to submit their moves, with the move played by the viewers being decided by a democratic vote.[10] Speelman won the match, although the viewers put up a good fight. The broadcast went for approximately three hours, about double the time that it had been scheduled for.[11]
He twice won the BBC'sThe Master Game competition before taking over fromLeonard Barden as its resident expert. During the 1980s he presented the BBC seriesPlay Chess. In recent years he has diversified into a number of creative areas, running competitions in creative thinking forThe Independent newspaper and theMind Sports Olympiad. Since January 1996 he has written the off-beatBeachcomber column for theDaily Express[12] and has also written books on chess, mathematics, humour and trivia.[citation needed] He has also been a regular guest on theBBC Radio 4 and occasional TV programme,Puzzle Panel and appeared in Series 8 ofThe Museum of Curiosity also on Radio 4.[citation needed]
Aside from his chess and media-related activities, Hartston is a mathematician and industrial psychologist. During the 1980s, he was recruited byMeredith Belbin, at the Industrial Training Research Unit inCambridge, to research the dynamics of teams. While continuing to write the Beachcomber column and other features for theDaily Express, he was also behind the launching of the now defunctwakkipedia.com Internet site of useless information. His latest publication isA Brief History of Puzzles: 120 of the World's Most Baffling Brainteasers from the Sphinx to Sudoku (2019).[13]
On 2 April 2013 it was reported that Hartston had "perfected" a formula for predicting the winner of theGrand National horse race, in a study commissioned by bookmakerWilliam Hill.[14][15][16] The story of the winning formula has since been widely thought to be anApril Fools joke for which many have fallen.[17]
In 2013 Hartston and his friend Josef Kollar became regular 'viewers' on theChannel 4 programmeGogglebox.[18]
In 2023 his bookKnock, knock! In pursuit of a grand unified theory of humour was published by Watkins Media.[19]
Hartston was the first of three British chess champions to be married toWoman GrandmasterJana Bellin (née Malypetrova) (January 1970 in Cambridge). With his second wife, Elizabeth Bannerman (1978) he has two sons, James and Nicholas.[3]
Hartston has also written various technical chess books under his full name of William R. Hartston or William Roland Hartston.
