English Chess Forum

Uploaded today by the BBC's Archive channel. The first Master Game final. Features substantial contributions from Leonard Barden. https://youtu.be/UUAJfB6tGgc?is=TtKLp73mLsV2oIsm

Hartston won the following series as well - the first two were all-British affairs.

The third outing became international, and saw Karpov beat Miles.

"Oh dear, it's happened" (Hartston on the opening)

Christopher Kreuzer wrote: ↑

Sun Oct 11, 2026 4:52 pm

"Oh dear, it's happened" (Hartston on the opening)

Another memorable comment was John Nunn threatening to diagonalise someone. That made it to a Bill Tidy cartoon with a caption "Police seek Bishop".

Jeremy James. Not a clue what was going on.

Nick Ivell wrote: ↑

Sun Oct 11, 2026 6:37 pm

Jeremy James. Not a clue what was going on.

Wasn't that the point? He represented the casual player audience, to ask that question of Barden or Hartston.

ISTR he once admitted he was basically a beginner at chess, he also presented bridge programmes around then and seemed to know a bit more.

I did like Hartston's dryly humourous comments about some of the theory being in his book, but it was probably wrong. And Speelman saying simply "what a load of rubbish" about his own play. It was really good to hear Leonard speaking, I am not sure I had ever heard him speak before! (I may have missed the bootleg copies of these programmes when on YouTube before, glad the BBC Archives are putting them up now, hopefully more later). How old is Speelman there, and how old was Hartston?

PS. Also a brief glimpse of P.H. (Peter Hugh) Clarke.

Speelman has just turned 70, and was only 19 then. Hartston would have been 28 I think.