Dr Timothy Harding's homepage

I am the editor of Chess Mail and webmaster of this site.

My doctoral thesis on correspondence chess in Britain & Ireland, 1824-1914, was accepted in 2009. On 10 July I was formally conferred with the PhD degree in History by Dr Mary Robinson (former President of Ireland), the Chancellor of the University of Dublin.

My next chess book, Correspondence Chess in Britain and Ireland, 1824-1987: A History, is partly based on the thesis and partly on additional research. I have now delivered the text and illustrations to McFarland, the leading publishers of chess history books, and it should be in print in late 2010. I hope that a monograph about the social and cultural history of Victorian games will follow later.

I write the monthly column, The Kibitzer at The Chess Cafe website. It is now in its fourteenth year. An index table of all the titles links to the files themselves! I have also begun to write an occasional series of articles on CC for the Spanish magazine Jaques. The first article was published in September 2009 and the second in December.

My most recent academic article on chess history deals with chess columns in Victorian England. It is now out in Victorian Periodicals Review (Winter 2009 issue). Readers with access to the Project Muse e-journals can find it there.

Another article by me, ‘A Fenian Pastime’?: early Irish board games and their identification with chess will be published in the next (May 2010) number of Irish Historical Studies.

My first publication in an academic journal appeared in 2005. Ireland's queen of chess: Frideswide Rowland and her world is in the volume History Studies 6 (University of Limerick, 2005); ISSN 1393-7782.

Another academic article about chess history appeared in a book collection: ‘Policeman on the case: early chess in Lancashire and the Preston Guardian chess column, 1879-83’ in A. Brown and R. Spalding (eds.), Entertainment, Leisure and Identities (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2007), pp. 50-65. ISBN 9-781847-182364.

Tim Harding, in his doctoral robes, standing in front of the statue of George Salmon in the front square of Trinity College Dublin. Dr Salmon, mathematician and theologian, played against both Morphy and Steinitz in simultaneous displays and once beat Harrwitz playing level. He was later Provost of the university.

I have been playing chess both OTB and by correspondence since the 1960s and have written about chess for over 30 years. I played on board 6 for Ireland in the Final of the 15th CC Olympiad and captained the team. I am currently playing in a preliminbarys ection of the 2nd ICCF Veternas World Cup.

I am a Senior International Master of Correspondence Chess (title awarded by ICCF in 2002). My first place in the ICCF Delegates & Officials IM-A tournament helped me to earn that title.

 I have edited an anthology of CC writings, The Write Move, and also compiled the MegaCorr4 CD series, now replaced by UltraCorr.

I am also the author of many chess books.

My full bibliography is now available again.

 See our shopping cart for 50 Golden Chess Games and other books.
Since 1976 I have been living in Dublin, Ireland, where I was on the editorial staff of The Sunday Press up to May 1995, when it ceased publication. I founded Chess Mail Ltd. in 1996 and the magazine was published in nine volumes (82 numbers) ending in January 2006. I am married with two student daughters.

My best success as an OTB player was joint first with GM Bojan Kurajica at the 1973 Hammersmith Open in London ahead of many masters and GMs, but it was only 7 rounds and I didn't have to play Kurajica (we scored 6.5/7). The half point I dropped was against Jonathan Mestel.

I also won a good prize at the Le Havre 1980 international open.

I played on the Irish team at the 1984 FIDE Olympiad in Thessaloniki, scoring 50%.

History of the Hardings (website with research by Steve Harding, England: no relation, so far as I know!)

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