Stuart Milner-Barry
Encyclopedia
Sir Stuart Milner-Barry KCVO
, CB
, OBE
(20 September 1906 – 25 March 1995) was a British chess
player, chess writer, World War II codebreaker
and civil servant. He represented England in chess both before and after World War II. He worked at Bletchley Park
during World War II, and was head of "Hut 6
", a section responsible for deciphering messages which had been encrypted using the German Enigma machine
. He was one of four leading codebreakers at Bletchley to petition the then-Prime Minister Winston Churchill
directly for more resources for their work. After the war he worked in the Treasury
, and later administered the British honours system
. In chess, he represented England in international tournaments, and lent his name to three opening
variations.
, London, Philip Stuart was the second of six children to a schoolteacher, Edward Leopold Milner-Barry, who died in 1917, and his wife, Edith Mary. A talented chess player, he won the first British Boys' Championship in 1923. He was a pupil at Cheltenham College
, and won a scholarship to Trinity College
, Cambridge, where he obtained firsts in classics
and moral sciences. He represented Cambridge in chess. At Cambridge, he befriended another chess player, C. H. O'D. (Hugh) Alexander, and composed a number of chess puzzle
s. Between 1929 and 1938 he was a city stockbroker, although he was unhappy with the work. From 1938, he was the chess correspondent for The Times
, succeeded in 1945 by Harry Golombek
.
won. Milner-Barry's best results in international competition were achieved in three straight years at the Margate
tournaments from 1937–1939, and at Hastings
1938. In all four events he finished just above the middle against strong fields, with performance ratings (as calculated by Chessmetrics
) between 2538 and 2565. This places him at a solid International Master standard, although he never received this title. He reached as high as #65 in the world between June and August 1941, according to Chessmetrics, which ranks historical chess performances retrospectively, using modern algorithms.
He represented England in chess, and played in the international Chess Olympiad
s of 1937 and 1939. The latter tournament, held in Buenos Aires
, Argentina
, coincided with Britain's declaration of war on Germany in September 1939. Milner-Barry, with teammates who included Hugh Alexander (at that time the British chess champion) and Harry Golombek, abandoned the tournament unfinished, and returned to Britain. His full Olympiad results are listed later in the article.
Upon their return, all three soon joined the Government Code and Cypher School (GCCS) at Bletchley Park
. Milner-Barry was recruited by mathematician Gordon Welchman
, who had been his contemporary at Trinity College; in turn Milner-Barry recruited Hugh Alexander. Arriving in early 1940, he joined Welchman's "Hut 6
" section, whose task was to solve the Enigma cipher machine
as used by the German Army
and Air Force
.
In 1993, Milner-Barry wrote that "to this day I could not claim that I fully understood how the machine worked, let alone what was involved in the problems of breaking and reading the Enigma cipher". Nonetheless, with his knowledge of the German language, he made a study of the decrypts and found that they contained stereotyped patterns and forms of address that could be exploited as "cribs" – reliable guesses for the plain language message that matched a given piece of encrypted text. Finding reliable cribs was a critical task for Hut 6, as Enigma was broken primarily with the aid of "bombe
s", large electromechanical machines which automatically searched for parts of the correct settings. Bombes were reliant on a suitable crib in order to succeed. In autumn 1940, Milner-Barry was put in charge of the "Crib Room".
He was billet
ed with Alexander, who was working in Hut 8
, the counterpart to Hut 6 working on German Naval Enigma. Their close friendship let them easily resolve the competing needs of their sections for the limited available bombe
time. By October 1941, he was deputy head of Hut 6 under Welchman. At this time, Bletchley Park was experiencing a shortage of clerical staff which was delaying the work on Enigma, and the management of GCCS appeared unable to obtain the resources needed. This affected both Hut 6 and Hut 8, which was run by mathematician Alan Turing
with Hugh Alexander as his deputy. Together, Welchman, Milner-Barry, Turing and Alexander bypassed the chain of command
and wrote a memorandum directly to the Prime Minister
, Winston Churchill
, outlining their difficulties. It fell to Milner-Barry to deliver the message to 10 Downing Street
in person, on 21 October 1941. The next day, Churchill responded, "Action this day: Make sure they have all they want on extreme priority and report to me that this has been done". Within a month their needs were being met.
In autumn 1943, Milner-Barry took over as head of Hut 6
, which by that time had grown to over 450 staff, Welchman having been appointed the Assistant Director of Mechanisation at Bletchley Park. He remained in charge until the end of the war, presiding over a number of technical challenges presented by the introduction of extra security devices to the German Enigma, including the Enigma Uhr and a rewireable "reflector" rotor. His entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography notes that, "although he increasingly felt that Hut 6 was on the verge of losing the ability to decode Enigma, it held on until the end of the war, and this was due in no small part to his gifted leadership". The official history of Hut 6, written immediately after the end of World War II, comments on his early "most vital technical achievement" in finding cribs, and on his "administrative and diplomatic talents" in his later role as head of the section.
in 1945 with the grade of Principal. In 1947, he married Thelma Tennant Wells, with whom he had a son and two daughters. The same year, he was promoted to Assistant Secretary
, and Under-secretary in 1954. Apart from a stint in the Ministry of Health
from 1958–1960, he remained with the Treasury until 1966, when, aged 60, he had reached the normal retirement age for the civil service. He was persuaded instead to carry on as a ceremonial officer administering the honours system
. In this role, he supported the knighthoods of P. G. Wodehouse
and Noel Coward
. Milner-Barry eventually retired in 1977. He was appointed OBE
in 1946 for his work in World War II, CB
in 1962, and KCVO
in 1975.
, and Milner-Barry's wartime codebreaking knowledge would have been of great interest to the Soviets; the very fact that Britain had broken German codes on a massive scale was kept secret until 1974, when Frederick Winterbotham's book The Ultra Secret was published. He placed second in the British Chess Championship at Hastings 1953 (finishing behind only Daniel Yanofsky
), with a score of 8/11; this would be his best result in British Championships.
He was president of the British Chess Federation between 1970 and 1973, competed in the British Championship as late as 1978, and was still competing in club and county-level tournaments and matches into his 80s. His obituary in The Independent
recalled his "savagely effective attacking style, honed to perfection through a series of 'serious friendly games' against his old rival Hugh Alexander". In 1972, George Koltanowski
wrote that, "his style was very pleasing to spectators because he was always looking for dangerous continuations and quite often he found them!" His name is associated with three chess opening
variations: the Milner-Barry Variation of the Nimzo-Indian Defence
(E33 in the Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings
), (1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.Qc2 Nc6), the Milner-Barry Gambit in the French Defence
(C02 in ECO), (1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 c5 4.c3 Nc6 5.Nf3 Qb6 6.Bd3 cxd4 7.cxd4 Bd7 8.0-0!? Nxd4 9.Nxd4 Qxd4 10.Nc3), and the Milner-Barry variation in the Petroff Defence (C42 in ECO), (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Nxe5 d6 4.Nf3 Nxe4 5.Qe2 Qe7 6.d3 Nf6 7. Bg5 Nbd7).
Overall, he scored (+12 =13 -13), 18.5/38, for 48.7 per cent.
He died on 25 March 1995 in Lewisham Hospital, London. A memorial service
was held for him at Westminster Abbey
on 15 June.
Royal Victorian Order
The Royal Victorian Order is a dynastic order of knighthood and a house order of chivalry recognising distinguished personal service to the order's Sovereign, the reigning monarch of the Commonwealth realms, any members of her family, or any of her viceroys...
, CB
Order of the Bath
The Most Honourable Order of the Bath is a British order of chivalry founded by George I on 18 May 1725. The name derives from the elaborate mediæval ceremony for creating a knight, which involved bathing as one of its elements. The knights so created were known as Knights of the Bath...
, OBE
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
(20 September 1906 – 25 March 1995) was a British chess
Chess
Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...
player, chess writer, World War II codebreaker
Codebreaker
Codebreaker may refer to:*A person who performs cryptanalysis*The Codebreakers, a 1967 book on history of cryptography by David Kahn*Codebreaker , a 1981 puzzle-based computer game, originally released for the Atari 2600...
and civil servant. He represented England in chess both before and after World War II. He worked at Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park is an estate located in the town of Bletchley, in Buckinghamshire, England, which currently houses the National Museum of Computing...
during World War II, and was head of "Hut 6
Hut 6
Hut 6 was a wartime section of Bletchley Park tasked with the solution of German Army and Air Force Enigma machine ciphers. Hut 8, by contrast, attacked Naval Enigma...
", a section responsible for deciphering messages which had been encrypted using the German Enigma machine
Enigma machine
An Enigma machine is any of a family of related electro-mechanical rotor cipher machines used for the encryption and decryption of secret messages. Enigma was invented by German engineer Arthur Scherbius at the end of World War I...
. He was one of four leading codebreakers at Bletchley to petition the then-Prime Minister Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
directly for more resources for their work. After the war he worked in the Treasury
HM Treasury
HM Treasury, in full Her Majesty's Treasury, informally The Treasury, is the United Kingdom government department responsible for developing and executing the British government's public finance policy and economic policy...
, and later administered the British honours system
British honours system
The British honours system is a means of rewarding individuals' personal bravery, achievement, or service to the United Kingdom and the British Overseas Territories...
. In chess, he represented England in international tournaments, and lent his name to three opening
Chess opening
A chess opening is the group of initial moves of a chess game. Recognized sequences of opening moves are referred to as openings as initiated by White or defenses, as created in reply by Black. There are many dozens of different openings, and hundreds of named variants. The Oxford Companion to...
variations.
Early life and education
Born in HendonHendon
Hendon is a London suburb situated northwest of Charing Cross.-History:Hendon was historically a civil parish in the county of Middlesex. The manor is described in Domesday , but the name, 'Hendun' meaning 'at the highest hill', is earlier...
, London, Philip Stuart was the second of six children to a schoolteacher, Edward Leopold Milner-Barry, who died in 1917, and his wife, Edith Mary. A talented chess player, he won the first British Boys' Championship in 1923. He was a pupil at Cheltenham College
Cheltenham College
Cheltenham College is a co-educational independent school, located in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England.One of the public schools of the Victorian period, it was opened in July 1841. An Anglican foundation, it is known for its classical, military and sporting traditions.The 1893 book Great...
, and won a scholarship to Trinity College
Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...
, Cambridge, where he obtained firsts in classics
Classics
Classics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...
and moral sciences. He represented Cambridge in chess. At Cambridge, he befriended another chess player, C. H. O'D. (Hugh) Alexander, and composed a number of chess puzzle
Chess puzzle
A chess puzzle is a puzzle in which knowledge of the pieces and rules of chess is used to solve logically a chess-related problem. The longstanding popularity of chess has paved the way for a rich tradition of such chess-related puzzles and composed problems, which assume a familiarity with the...
s. Between 1929 and 1938 he was a city stockbroker, although he was unhappy with the work. From 1938, he was the chess correspondent for The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, succeeded in 1945 by Harry Golombek
Harry Golombek
Harry Golombek OBE , was a British chess International Master and honorary grandmaster, chess arbiter, and chess author. He was three times British chess champion, in 1947, 1949, and 1955 and finished second in 1948. He became a grandmaster in 1985.He was the chess correspondent of The Times...
.
Early chess contributions
He made his debut in international-class chess at the strong London 1932 tournament, which World Champion Alexander AlekhineAlexander Alekhine
Alexander Alexandrovich Alekhine was the fourth World Chess Champion. He is often considered one of the greatest chess players ever.By the age of twenty-two, he was already among the strongest chess players in the world. During the 1920s, he won most of the tournaments in which he played...
won. Milner-Barry's best results in international competition were achieved in three straight years at the Margate
Margate
-Demography:As of the 2001 UK census, Margate had a population of 40,386.The ethnicity of the town was 97.1% white, 1.0% mixed race, 0.5% black, 0.8% Asian, 0.6% Chinese or other ethnicity....
tournaments from 1937–1939, and at Hastings
Hastings International Chess Congress
The Hastings International Chess Congress is an annual chess congress which takes place in Hastings, England, around the turn of the year. The main event is the Hastings Premier tournament, which was traditionally a 10 to 16 player round-robin tournament. In 2004/05 the tournament was played in the...
1938. In all four events he finished just above the middle against strong fields, with performance ratings (as calculated by Chessmetrics
Chessmetrics
Chessmetrics is a system for rating chess players devised by Jeff Sonas. It is intended as an improvement over the Elo rating system.-Implementation:...
) between 2538 and 2565. This places him at a solid International Master standard, although he never received this title. He reached as high as #65 in the world between June and August 1941, according to Chessmetrics, which ranks historical chess performances retrospectively, using modern algorithms.
He represented England in chess, and played in the international Chess Olympiad
Chess Olympiad
The Chess Olympiad is a biennial chess tournament in which teams from all over the world compete against each other. The event is organised by FIDE, which selects the host nation.-Birth of the Olympiad:The first Olympiad was unofficial...
s of 1937 and 1939. The latter tournament, held in Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
, Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
, coincided with Britain's declaration of war on Germany in September 1939. Milner-Barry, with teammates who included Hugh Alexander (at that time the British chess champion) and Harry Golombek, abandoned the tournament unfinished, and returned to Britain. His full Olympiad results are listed later in the article.
Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park is an estate located in the town of Bletchley, in Buckinghamshire, England, which currently houses the National Museum of Computing...
. Milner-Barry was recruited by mathematician Gordon Welchman
Gordon Welchman
Gordon Welchman was a British-American mathematician, university professor, World War II codebreaker at Bletchley Park, and author.-Education and early career:...
, who had been his contemporary at Trinity College; in turn Milner-Barry recruited Hugh Alexander. Arriving in early 1940, he joined Welchman's "Hut 6
Hut 6
Hut 6 was a wartime section of Bletchley Park tasked with the solution of German Army and Air Force Enigma machine ciphers. Hut 8, by contrast, attacked Naval Enigma...
" section, whose task was to solve the Enigma cipher machine
Enigma machine
An Enigma machine is any of a family of related electro-mechanical rotor cipher machines used for the encryption and decryption of secret messages. Enigma was invented by German engineer Arthur Scherbius at the end of World War I...
as used by the German Army
German Army
The German Army is the land component of the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Germany. Following the disbanding of the Wehrmacht after World War II, it was re-established in 1955 as the Bundesheer, part of the newly formed West German Bundeswehr along with the Navy and the Air Force...
and Air Force
Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe is a generic German term for an air force. It is also the official name for two of the four historic German air forces, the Wehrmacht air arm founded in 1935 and disbanded in 1946; and the current Bundeswehr air arm founded in 1956....
.
In 1993, Milner-Barry wrote that "to this day I could not claim that I fully understood how the machine worked, let alone what was involved in the problems of breaking and reading the Enigma cipher". Nonetheless, with his knowledge of the German language, he made a study of the decrypts and found that they contained stereotyped patterns and forms of address that could be exploited as "cribs" – reliable guesses for the plain language message that matched a given piece of encrypted text. Finding reliable cribs was a critical task for Hut 6, as Enigma was broken primarily with the aid of "bombe
Bombe
The bombe was an electromechanical device used by British cryptologists to help decipher German Enigma-machine-encrypted signals during World War II...
s", large electromechanical machines which automatically searched for parts of the correct settings. Bombes were reliant on a suitable crib in order to succeed. In autumn 1940, Milner-Barry was put in charge of the "Crib Room".
He was billet
Billet
A billet is a term for living quarters to which a soldier is assigned to sleep. Historically, it referred to a private dwelling that was required to accept the soldier....
ed with Alexander, who was working in Hut 8
Hut 8
Hut 8 was a section at Bletchley Park tasked with solving German naval Enigma messages. The section was led initially by Alan Turing...
, the counterpart to Hut 6 working on German Naval Enigma. Their close friendship let them easily resolve the competing needs of their sections for the limited available bombe
Bombe
The bombe was an electromechanical device used by British cryptologists to help decipher German Enigma-machine-encrypted signals during World War II...
time. By October 1941, he was deputy head of Hut 6 under Welchman. At this time, Bletchley Park was experiencing a shortage of clerical staff which was delaying the work on Enigma, and the management of GCCS appeared unable to obtain the resources needed. This affected both Hut 6 and Hut 8, which was run by mathematician Alan Turing
Alan Turing
Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS , was an English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of "algorithm" and "computation" with the Turing machine, which played a...
with Hugh Alexander as his deputy. Together, Welchman, Milner-Barry, Turing and Alexander bypassed the chain of command
Chain of Command
Chain of Command may refer to:* Chain of command, in a military context, the line of authority and responsibility along which orders are passed* "Chain of Command" , the fifth episode of the first season of Beast Wars...
and wrote a memorandum directly to the Prime Minister
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the Head of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister and Cabinet are collectively accountable for their policies and actions to the Sovereign, to Parliament, to their political party and...
, Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
, outlining their difficulties. It fell to Milner-Barry to deliver the message to 10 Downing Street
10 Downing Street
10 Downing Street, colloquially known in the United Kingdom as "Number 10", is the headquarters of Her Majesty's Government and the official residence and office of the First Lord of the Treasury, who is now always the Prime Minister....
in person, on 21 October 1941. The next day, Churchill responded, "Action this day: Make sure they have all they want on extreme priority and report to me that this has been done". Within a month their needs were being met.
In autumn 1943, Milner-Barry took over as head of Hut 6
Hut 6
Hut 6 was a wartime section of Bletchley Park tasked with the solution of German Army and Air Force Enigma machine ciphers. Hut 8, by contrast, attacked Naval Enigma...
, which by that time had grown to over 450 staff, Welchman having been appointed the Assistant Director of Mechanisation at Bletchley Park. He remained in charge until the end of the war, presiding over a number of technical challenges presented by the introduction of extra security devices to the German Enigma, including the Enigma Uhr and a rewireable "reflector" rotor. His entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography notes that, "although he increasingly felt that Hut 6 was on the verge of losing the ability to decode Enigma, it held on until the end of the war, and this was due in no small part to his gifted leadership". The official history of Hut 6, written immediately after the end of World War II, comments on his early "most vital technical achievement" in finding cribs, and on his "administrative and diplomatic talents" in his later role as head of the section.
After World War II
Milner-Barry joined the TreasuryTreasury
A treasury is either*A government department related to finance and taxation.*A place where currency or precious items is/are kept....
in 1945 with the grade of Principal. In 1947, he married Thelma Tennant Wells, with whom he had a son and two daughters. The same year, he was promoted to Assistant Secretary
Assistant Secretary
Assistant Secretary is a grade in the British Civil Service, now more commonly styled Divisional Manager or Deputy Director. In the grading scheme they are denoted Grade 5....
, and Under-secretary in 1954. Apart from a stint in the Ministry of Health
Department of Health (United Kingdom)
The Department of Health is a department of the United Kingdom government with responsibility for government policy for health and social care matters and for the National Health Service in England along with a few elements of the same matters which are not otherwise devolved to the Scottish,...
from 1958–1960, he remained with the Treasury until 1966, when, aged 60, he had reached the normal retirement age for the civil service. He was persuaded instead to carry on as a ceremonial officer administering the honours system
British honours system
The British honours system is a means of rewarding individuals' personal bravery, achievement, or service to the United Kingdom and the British Overseas Territories...
. In this role, he supported the knighthoods of P. G. Wodehouse
P. G. Wodehouse
Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE was an English humorist, whose body of work includes novels, short stories, plays, poems, song lyrics, and numerous pieces of journalism. He enjoyed enormous popular success during a career that lasted more than seventy years and his many writings continue to be...
and Noel Coward
Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...
. Milner-Barry eventually retired in 1977. He was appointed OBE
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
in 1946 for his work in World War II, CB
Order of the Bath
The Most Honourable Order of the Bath is a British order of chivalry founded by George I on 18 May 1725. The name derives from the elaborate mediæval ceremony for creating a knight, which involved bathing as one of its elements. The knights so created were known as Knights of the Bath...
in 1962, and KCVO
Royal Victorian Order
The Royal Victorian Order is a dynastic order of knighthood and a house order of chivalry recognising distinguished personal service to the order's Sovereign, the reigning monarch of the Commonwealth realms, any members of her family, or any of her viceroys...
in 1975.
Later chess contributions
He had also continued to play chess, competing in the 1952 and 1956 Olympiads. This 1956 Olympiad trip to Moscow was risky, since Britain and the USSR, which had been allies during World War II, were by then locked into the Cold WarCold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
, and Milner-Barry's wartime codebreaking knowledge would have been of great interest to the Soviets; the very fact that Britain had broken German codes on a massive scale was kept secret until 1974, when Frederick Winterbotham's book The Ultra Secret was published. He placed second in the British Chess Championship at Hastings 1953 (finishing behind only Daniel Yanofsky
Daniel Yanofsky
Daniel Abraham Yanofsky, OC, QC was Canada's first chess grandmaster, an eight-time Canadian Chess Champion, a chess writer, a chess arbiter, and a lawyer.-Life in chess:...
), with a score of 8/11; this would be his best result in British Championships.
He was president of the British Chess Federation between 1970 and 1973, competed in the British Championship as late as 1978, and was still competing in club and county-level tournaments and matches into his 80s. His obituary in The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
recalled his "savagely effective attacking style, honed to perfection through a series of 'serious friendly games' against his old rival Hugh Alexander". In 1972, George Koltanowski
George Koltanowski
George Koltanowski was a Belgian-born American chess player, promoter, and writer. He was informally known as "Kolty". Koltanowski set the world's blindfold record on 20 September 1937, in Edinburgh, by playing 34 chess games simultaneously while blindfolded, making headline news around the world...
wrote that, "his style was very pleasing to spectators because he was always looking for dangerous continuations and quite often he found them!" His name is associated with three chess opening
Chess opening
A chess opening is the group of initial moves of a chess game. Recognized sequences of opening moves are referred to as openings as initiated by White or defenses, as created in reply by Black. There are many dozens of different openings, and hundreds of named variants. The Oxford Companion to...
variations: the Milner-Barry Variation of the Nimzo-Indian Defence
Nimzo-Indian Defence
The Nimzo-Indian Defence is a chess opening characterised by the moves:This hypermodern opening was developed by Grandmaster Aron Nimzowitsch who introduced it to master-level chess in the early 20th century. Unlike most Indian openings the Nimzo-Indian does not involve an immediate fianchetto,...
(E33 in the Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings
Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings
The Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings is a classification system for the opening moves in a game of chess. It is presented as a five volume book collection describing chess openings...
), (1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.Qc2 Nc6), the Milner-Barry Gambit in the French Defence
French Defence
The French Defence is a chess opening. It is characterised by the moves:The French has a reputation for solidity and resilience, though it can result in a somewhat cramped game for Black in the early stages...
(C02 in ECO), (1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 c5 4.c3 Nc6 5.Nf3 Qb6 6.Bd3 cxd4 7.cxd4 Bd7 8.0-0!? Nxd4 9.Nxd4 Qxd4 10.Nc3), and the Milner-Barry variation in the Petroff Defence (C42 in ECO), (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Nxe5 d6 4.Nf3 Nxe4 5.Qe2 Qe7 6.d3 Nf6 7. Bg5 Nbd7).
Olympiad results
Milner-Barry's detailed results while competing for England in chess Olympiads are as follows:- Stockholm 19377th Chess OlympiadThe 7th Chess Olympiad, organized by the FIDE and comprising an open and women's tournament, as well as several events designed to promote the game of chess, took place between July 31 and August 14, 1937, in Stockholm, Sweden]....
: board 3, 3/9 (+2 =2 -5); - Buenos Aires 19398th Chess OlympiadThe 8th Chess Olympiad, organised by the Fédération Internationale des Échecs , comprised an 'open' tournament, as well as a Women's World Championship contest...
: board 3, 4/5 (+3 =2 -0); - Helsinki 195210th Chess OlympiadThe 10th Chess Olympiad, organized by the FIDE and comprising an open and women's tournament, as well as several events designed to promote the game of chess, took place between August 9 and August 31, 1952, in Helsinki, Finland.-References:* OlimpBase...
: board 3, 5.5/12 (+2 =7 -3); - Moscow 195612th Chess OlympiadThe 12th Chess Olympiad, organized by the FIDE and comprising an open and women's tournament, as well as several events designed to promote the game of chess, took place between August 31 and September 25, 1956, in Moscow, Soviet Union.-References:...
: board 4, 6/12 (+5 =2 -5).
Overall, he scored (+12 =13 -13), 18.5/38, for 48.7 per cent.
Final years
In 1985, Milner-Barry fiercely defended the reputation of Gordon Welchman, who had come under posthumous criticism for publishing details about the wartime work of Hut 6. In 1992, echoing his wartime visit to 10 Downing Street, Milner-Barry was a member of a party who delivered a petition to the Prime Minister calling on the government to help preserve Bletchley Park, which was then under threat from demolition.He died on 25 March 1995 in Lewisham Hospital, London. A memorial service
Funeral
A funeral is a ceremony for celebrating, sanctifying, or remembering the life of a person who has died. Funerary customs comprise the complex of beliefs and practices used by a culture to remember the dead, from interment itself, to various monuments, prayers, and rituals undertaken in their honor...
was held for him at Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey
The Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, popularly known as Westminster Abbey, is a large, mainly Gothic church, in the City of Westminster, London, United Kingdom, located just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is the traditional place of coronation and burial site for English,...
on 15 June.