Tim Harding

Timothy David Harding was born in London in 1948, and began playing competitive chess at school. After reading Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford, he was caught up in the Bobby Fischer boom and started writing technical articles and instructional books on chess (under the byline T. D. Harding).

In 1976 Tim moved to Dublin, Ireland, where he worked in various literary capacities but maintained his interest in chess and writing about the game. He played on the Irish team at the 1984 Chess Olympiad in Thessaloniki, Greece, and is a Senior International Master of correspondence chess.

From 1996-2005 Tim edited the magazine Chess Mail and became increasingly interested in the history of the game, the subject of his latest books. In 2009 Trinity College Dublin awarded him a PhD for his dissertation on chess history.

Since completing his doctorate, Tim has published two books and is working on a third. He has also been teaching European history part-time and developing an historical project about links between Ireland and Burma/Myanmar, the country where his mother was born. He expects to publish on this subject in two or three years time. Tim has posted some of his research articles online at http://www.chessmail.com. He also intends to release some of his older titles as e-books in 2013-2014.