William Hartston (born 1947) is a British chess player who played competitively from 1962 to 1987 with a highest FIDE rating of 2485 (just shy of the requirement for International Grandmaster). He won the British Chess Championship in 1973 and 1975.
During the 1980s he presented the BBC series Play Chess, encouraging children to take up the game. He has since diversified into a number of creative areas. He has run 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 books on chess, mathematics, humour and trivia.
He has been a regular guest on the BBC Radio 4 programme, Puzzle Panel.
Bibliography
- How To Cheat At Chess (1977)
- Soft Pawn (1980)
- The Ultimate Irrelevant Encyclopaedia (1984)
- Kings of Chess (1985)
- Drunken Goldfish and Other Irrelevant Scientific Research (1988)
- Teach Yourself Better Chess (1997)
- The Book of Numbers: The Ultimate Compendium of Facts About Figures (2000)
- What Are the Chances of That? (2004)
- What´s What - The Encyclopedia of Quite Extraordinary Information"" (2005)
He has written various technical chess books under his full name of William R. Hartston or William Roland Hartston.
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