Tim Harding

Timothy David Harding was born in London in 1948, and started playing competitive chess while at school. After reading Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford, he was caught up in the Bobby Fischer boom and started playing chess at a quite high level and writing on the game (mostly under the byline T. D. Harding). Tim's latest book "Eminent Victorian Chess Players: Ten Biographies" was published in February and he is now researching a more detailed work on one of its subjects, J. H. Blackburne. In 1976 Tim moved to Dublin, Ireland, where he worked in various literary capacities. He played on the Irish team at the 1984 Chess Olympiad in Thessaloniki, Greece, and earned the title of Senior International Master of Correspondence Chess. From 1996-2005 Tim edited the magazine Chess Mail but became increasingly interested in the history of the game, which has been the subject of his recent books. In 2009 Trinity College Dublin awarded Tim the degree of PhD at for his dissertation on chess history and he works there as a part-time tutor in modern European history. His book “Correspondence Chess in Britain and Ireland, 1824-1987”, which expanded on some aspects of his dissertation, was shortlisted for the English Chess Federation’s Book of the Year award in 2011. Some of his articles can be read online at http://www.chessmail.com.Four of Tim's earlier books are still in print and he is considering launching e-books of some of them.Since completing his doctorate, Tim has also been developing an historical project on links between Ireland and Burma/Myanmar, the country where his mother was born, and he expects to publish on this subject in two or three years.