William Hartston
| William Hartson | |
|---|---|
| Full name | William Roland Hartston |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Born |
12 August 1947 London, UK |
| Title | International Master |
| FIDE rating | 2430 (March 2017) |
William Roland "Bill" Hartston (born London, 12 August 1947) is an English journalist who writes the Beachcomber column in the Daily Express and a chess player who played competitively from 1962 to 1987 with a highest Elo rating of 2485. He was awarded the title International Master in 1972, but is now best known as a chess author and presenter of the game on television.
At the 19th Chess Olympiad, held at Siegen 1970, he won the gold medal for best score on board 3 (78.1%). He won the British Chess Championship in 1973 and 1975. In international competition, he had many fine performances, but failed by the closest possible margin to achieve the results required for the formal award of the title of International Grandmaster. During his time as an PhD student at Cambridge, Hartston became the first person to stack the pieces from an entire chess set on top of a single white rook.
Since the early 1970s, he has made many TV appearances for the BBC, usually in the role of expert commentator and analyst on world title matches, including Fischer-Spassky '72, Karpov-Korchnoi '78, Kasparov-Short '93 and Kasparov-Anand '95. He twice won the BBC Master Game competition before taking over from Leonard Barden as its resident expert. During the 1980s he presented the BBC series Play Chess. In recent years he has diversified into a number of creative areas, running competitions in creative thinking for The Independent newspaper and the Mind Sports Olympiad. He writes the off-beat Beachcomber column for the Daily Express and has authored books on chess, mathematics, humour and trivia. He has also been a regular guest on the BBC Radio 4 and occasional TV programme, Puzzle Panel.
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