Bernard Cafferty

Bernard Cafferty was born on 27 June 1934 in Blackburn, Lancashire. British Chess News records that his mother's maiden name was Croft. He first encountered British Chess Magazine around 1949 or 1950, when a friend at St Mary's College in Blackburn subscribed and the two swapped magazines. He later said that this was just after Mikhail Botvinnik had become world champion, and that Botvinnik remained the player he most admired.

In 1951 Cafferty went to Birmingham University, where he graduated with a BA. He also took a university education diploma, writing a thesis on chess in schools that was later serialised in CHESS magazine. In the spring of 1952, as a first-year student, he visited Hastings for the British Boys' Championship, and he described the Hastings club room and library as feeling like the Holy of Holies of English chess. After winning the British Junior Championship in 1954 his chess career was put on hold by two years of National Service in the Army.

Cafferty was one of the leading English players of the late 1950s and 1960s and ranked in the national top ten in 1959 and 1960. He was joint British Boys' Champion in 1952 and British Junior Champion in 1954. On his British Championship debut in 1957 he scored 50 percent against six members of England's 1954 and 1956 Olympiad sides, beating Peter Clarke and Sir Stuart Milner-Barry and drawing with Jonathan Penrose and Hugh Alexander. He played in every British Championship from 1957 to 1971, finishing second equal behind Michael Haygarth in 1964, and he made a final appearance in August 1981.

He was British Correspondence Chess Champion in 1959/60 and won the British Lightning Championship (ten seconds a move) in 1964 (jointly), 1966, 1967, 1968 and 1969, the only player to win it on four successive occasions. He played top board for Warwickshire when they beat Yorkshire in the 1961 English Counties final, reached a peak Elo rating of 2440 in July 1971, represented England over the board and by correspondence, and was awarded the FIDE Master title in 1984. In 1974 he was second to Tony Miles when Miles won the World Junior Championship in Manila. Later he played in the 1998 World Senior Championship in Austria, and in Sussex he won the Hastings club championship in 1994 and 2001 (and jointly in 1995 and 1996) and the Sussex Championship in 1996 and 2003.

While living in the Midlands Cafferty taught geography, Latin and mathematics and, from 1964, Russian at St Philip's Grammar School in Birmingham. He said the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 killed the study of Russian, so in 1970 he became a chess professional, spending about ten years as a freelance writer and translator.

His translations included Alexander Kotov's Think Like a Grandmaster (1971), Botvinnik's Best Games 1947 to 1970 (1972) and Botvinnik's autobiography Achieving the Aim (1981), as well as books by Georgy Lisitsin and Alexei Sokolsky. He wrote Spassky's 100 Best Games (1972) and Tal's 100 Best Games (1975), co-wrote Chess with the Masters with Tony Gillam (1977), opening studies with David Hooper, Play the Evans Gambit with Tim Harding (1997) and The Soviet Chess Championships with Mark Taimanov (1998). He was chess columnist for the Birmingham Evening Mail from 1967 to around 2002 and for the Sunday Times from 1983 to 1997.

Cafferty answered an advertisement for the editorship of British Chess Magazine in late 1980, when the magazine was celebrating its centenary but facing a crisis after the death of owner Brian Reilly's son Freddy. He moved to Hastings in January 1981, worked alongside Reilly as deputy editor and then took over as editor. The magazine was sold to the British Chess Federation in late 1980, and he was given an undertaking that there would be no editorial interference. Editing the magazine single-handed from Market Street, St Leonards, he often worked a seven-day week, sending typed copy to a typesetter in Halifax and pasting up galley proofs by hand. He called his editorship, during the 1980s English chess explosion, a high point and a period of immense change. When Murray Chandler bought the magazine in 1991 and moved it to London, Cafferty stayed in Hastings as associate editor, a role he held until 2011, completing 30 years with the magazine.

Cafferty lived for many years in Birmingham before settling in Hastings in 1981, where he lived in a seafront flat full of books, about ten minutes from the chess club. He joined Hastings and St Leonards Chess Club in 1993 once he had cut back to part-time work, and he was its president from 1999 to 2009. He said he had grown to like Hastings, valued a chess club that was open every day, and found the sea air better for his health. Details of any marriage or children have not been made public.

A lifelong student of Soviet chess, Cafferty followed Russian sources closely, subscribing to Sovietsky Sport and listening to chess broadcasts on short-wave radio. In a 2009 interview with The Chess Parrot he described himself as a Russophile and a Sovietophobe, and recalled that David Bronstein's memoirs noted his anti-Soviet views. He said he was aware that Soviet players abroad had to report contacts with foreigners, and that some conversations might be with informers. He also remarked that he did not consider himself to have a great natural talent for chess, a point fellow players took as a sign of his capacity for hard work.

Cafferty's translations, especially Think Like a Grandmaster, put Soviet chess method into the hands of English-speaking players and are often linked with the rise of British chess in the 1970s. His collections of Spassky's and Tal's games were described by many players as among the first chess books they studied. John Saunders, his successor as BCM editor, recalled the advice of Murray Chandler that "you ignore Bernard at your peril" and called him wise, witty and warm-hearted. The Hastings club recalled that he wrote his own entry for its website.

Joint British Boys' Champion (1952); British Junior Champion (1954); British Correspondence Chess Champion (1959/60); British Lightning Champion (1964 jointly, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969); FIDE Master (1984); British Chess Federation President's Award (1991); Hastings club champion (1994, 2001, joint 1995 and 1996); Sussex Champion (1996, 2003).

Books: Spassky's 100 Best Games (1972); Tal's 100 Best Games (1975); Chess with the Masters (with Tony Gillam, 1977); English Opening (1977); A Complete Defence to 1 P-K4: A Study of Petroff's Defence (with David Hooper, 1979); British Chess Magazine 1923 to 1932: An Anthology (editor, 1986); Play for Mate (with David Hooper, 1990); Boris Spassky: Master of Tactics (1991); Play the Evans Gambit (with Tim Harding, 1997); The Soviet Chess Championships (with Mark Taimanov, 1998). Translations: Think Like a Grandmaster by Alexander Kotov (1971); Botvinnik's Best Games 1947 to 1970 (1972); Achieving the Aim by Mikhail Botvinnik (1981). In December 2010 British Chess Magazine marked his 30 years with an interview by editor Steve Giddins, and in 2009 he was interviewed by The Chess Parrot.

Bernard Cafferty died in Hastings, East Sussex, on Wednesday 4 November 2026, aged 92. John Saunders reported on the English Chess Forum that he had been unwell and in hospital for some time, latterly in palliative care. No cause of death has been made public. British Chess News, Hastings and St Leonards Chess Club, Malcolm Pein, John Saunders, Douglas Griffin and others paid tribute, recalling a major figure in English chess as a player, editor, writer and translator.