I’ve been pondering Britishness recently. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about British chessers. More precisely still, I’ve been asking myself who are the Grandmasters of British origin? It’s not as easy a question to answer as you might think.
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Nationality used to be straightforward. Where you were born, where you grew up, where you lived: all the same place.
Things are different now. I am Essex for cricket, Southampton (Hampshire) for football and Surrey for chess – a rather neat map of the course of my life. Counties for me, countries for a lot of folk these days.
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People like Jacob Aagaard, Alexander Baburin and Bogdan Lalic, for instance. Good men and true, no doubt, and they may or may not be or have been considered British in some sense. Not from around here, though, and clearly not of British origin.
What about Jim Plaskett, though? Born in Cyprus, apparently, and currently living in Spain. Does he count? I say that he does.
And William Watson? How would he respond if we marked his card as ‘Iraqi’ on the basis that he popped out in Baghdad? With Wellington’s line about being born in a stable not making one a horse? Who knows? Certainly not me, I haven’t asked him. Anyhoo, I’m counting him too (Watson, I mean, not The Duke).
Murray Chandler caused me some problems, although thinking about it I’m not sure why. Somehow he feels somehow British to me. Perhaps because when I started chessing he was a permanent fixture in the England national team. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t seem to have much of a Kiwi accent. Maybe I’m just confusing ‘British’ with what back in the day we used to call ‘Western’ or ‘First World’ – terms which in retrospect seem largely to have been used as a shorthand for ‘White but not communist’.
Bottom line: Chandler was born in Wellington and settled in England later in life. Hell, at the age of 20 he was still playing Olympiads for New Zealand. So, as much as I’d like it to be otherwise, Murray’s not making the cut.
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Having looked a bit about what ‘origin’ means, it’s time to move on to ‘Grandmaster’. Even that’s a little slippery from a definitional point of view.
I’m interested in the highest over-the-board title which has been earned by right. None of this GM-Emeritus stuff and not a GM of Problem solving or correspondence chess either. Not that there’s anything wrong with being any of those things. It’s just not what I want to count today.
Should I count Penrose under these criteria? He’s a ‘real’ GM apparently and yet an award given thirty years after the fact doesn’t seem quite what I’m trying to get at here. Feel free to mentally add him in if you see fit, but I’m not going to.
After all, if we’re going to count Penrose shouldn’t we include Bill Hartston as well? He could have had a post-dated Grandmastership too, he just chose not to pursue it. You’ve got to draw the line somewhere and whatever FIDE might say, mine comes down with JP on the wrong side I'm afraid.
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Nationality, if it means anything at all, is self-defined. If you rely on assumption, emotion and Wikipedia – as I have done here – any list that you might end up with tells you more about the compiler and the accuracy of web-based encyclopedias than it gives you an ‘objective truth’.
Still, for what it’s worth, and please feel free to correct me or argue differently, here is my list of Grandmasters of British origin. I think there are 43 of them.
[NB: I have a debt of gratitude to this EC Forum thread and the work done by Jack Rudd, Paul McKeown and Chris Kreuzer in particular]
Baburin; Aagaard
Penrose; Miles
No
Nationality used to be straightforward. Where you were born, where you grew up, where you lived: all the same place.
Things are different now. I am Essex for cricket, Southampton (Hampshire) for football and Surrey for chess – a rather neat map of the course of my life. Counties for me, countries for a lot of folk these days.
Nope
People like Jacob Aagaard, Alexander Baburin and Bogdan Lalic, for instance. Good men and true, no doubt, and they may or may not be or have been considered British in some sense. Not from around here, though, and clearly not of British origin.
What about Jim Plaskett, though? Born in Cyprus, apparently, and currently living in Spain. Does he count? I say that he does.
And William Watson? How would he respond if we marked his card as ‘Iraqi’ on the basis that he popped out in Baghdad? With Wellington’s line about being born in a stable not making one a horse? Who knows? Certainly not me, I haven’t asked him. Anyhoo, I’m counting him too (Watson, I mean, not The Duke).
Murray Chandler caused me some problems, although thinking about it I’m not sure why. Somehow he feels somehow British to me. Perhaps because when I started chessing he was a permanent fixture in the England national team. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t seem to have much of a Kiwi accent. Maybe I’m just confusing ‘British’ with what back in the day we used to call ‘Western’ or ‘First World’ – terms which in retrospect seem largely to have been used as a shorthand for ‘White but not communist’.
Bottom line: Chandler was born in Wellington and settled in England later in life. Hell, at the age of 20 he was still playing Olympiads for New Zealand. So, as much as I’d like it to be otherwise, Murray’s not making the cut.
Afraid not
Having looked a bit about what ‘origin’ means, it’s time to move on to ‘Grandmaster’. Even that’s a little slippery from a definitional point of view.
I’m interested in the highest over-the-board title which has been earned by right. None of this GM-Emeritus stuff and not a GM of Problem solving or correspondence chess either. Not that there’s anything wrong with being any of those things. It’s just not what I want to count today.
Should I count Penrose under these criteria? He’s a ‘real’ GM apparently and yet an award given thirty years after the fact doesn’t seem quite what I’m trying to get at here. Feel free to mentally add him in if you see fit, but I’m not going to.
After all, if we’re going to count Penrose shouldn’t we include Bill Hartston as well? He could have had a post-dated Grandmastership too, he just chose not to pursue it. You’ve got to draw the line somewhere and whatever FIDE might say, mine comes down with JP on the wrong side I'm afraid.
First
Nationality, if it means anything at all, is self-defined. If you rely on assumption, emotion and Wikipedia – as I have done here – any list that you might end up with tells you more about the compiler and the accuracy of web-based encyclopedias than it gives you an ‘objective truth’.
Still, for what it’s worth, and please feel free to correct me or argue differently, here is my list of Grandmasters of British origin. I think there are 43 of them.
[NB: I have a debt of gratitude to this EC Forum thread and the work done by Jack Rudd, Paul McKeown and Chris Kreuzer in particular]
Adams, Michael
Arkell, Keith
Conquest, Stuart
Davies, Nigel
Emms, John
Flear, Glenn
Gallagher, Joe
Gormally, Daniel
Gordon, Stephen
Haslinger, Stewart
Hebden, Mark
Hodgson, Julian
Howell, David
Howell, James
Jones, Gawain
Keene, Ray
King, Daniel
Kosten, Tony
Kumaran, Dharshan
Levitt, Jonathan
McDonald, Neil
McNab, Colin
McShane, Luke
Mestel, Jonathan
Miles, Antony
Motwani, Paul
Norwood, David
Nunn, John
Parker, Jonathan
Pert, Nicholas
Plaskett, James
Rowson, Jonathan
Sadler, Matthew
Shaw, John
Short, Nigel
Speelman, Jon
Stean, Michael
Summerscale, Aaraon
Turner, Matthew
Ward, Chris
Watson, William
Wells, Peter
Williams, Simon
Double Six Index
Baburin; Aagaard
Penrose; Miles