Timothy George Whitworth (England, 31.07.1932 - 17.04.2019)

Writer of chess composing books, chess editor, chessplayer, endgame study expert

Chess composing books

At the BDS website Brian Stephenson:

"... Although he was a composer of endgame studies, Timothy is also well known as the editor of three high quality collections of the work of study composers of a earlier era.

His anthologies of the work of :

 Leonid Kubbel (1984, revised 2004),

Hermanis Matisons (1987, revised 1997) and

The Platov Brothers (1994)

are the definitive works in English (and probably other languages) on those composers.

As well as being works of great scholarship (very few editors attempt to personally verify the source of every quoted composition) these books also have first-class production qualities.

These books satisfy the mind and they look and feel good too.

Another anthology edited by Timothy was The Best of Bent (1993), a selection of the work of that most prolific of British study composers, Mike Bent.

As you would expect, it is of the same high quality as his other work. ... " 

Timothy Whitworth has written a lot of articles, many of them when he was the Studies columnist for the British Chess Magazine from 1988 to 1995.

He also made a booklet with 20 of his best studies.

Magazine "Guardian"

In the  Magazine "Guardian", published on 3. July 2019 we can read about him:

"The son of Phoebe (nee May) and George Whitworth, he was born in Radwinter, Essex, where his father was the vicar.

Timothy Whitworth attended Marlborough college and then studied history at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating in 1955.

After training as a teacher at Christ Church, Oxford, he took up a post at King’s College Taunton, an independent school, where he remained for 30 years, versatile enough to teach a range of subjects, some of which he had to learn from scratch. He started with history and English and later pioneered economics and political studies at A-level. Former students still remember his grounding in Adam Smith, Marshall and Keynes, where every view had to be justified and explained, and which lasted them well into the second year of an economics degree.  

Timothy Whitworth coached school chess teams to winning performances, and also studied chess endgames, later developing this into a retirement career in Cambridge.

In an endgame study, the chess pieces are deliberately put into positions where the play shows something instructive, exciting or elegant. What is important is not who wins, but how they win.

Timothy Whitworth composed endgame studies of his own, but it was as an editor and compiler that he was outstanding.

He produced the standard collections of several eminent study composers, including Kubbel, Mattison and the Platov brothers, and was for seven years endgame study columnist of the British magazine of chess.

He worked with Mike Bent to compile The Best of Bent (1993), a selection of endgame studies, and collaborated with John Beasley to write two editions (1996 and 2017) of the book "Endgame Magic".

Timothy’s scholarly approach and meticulous attention to detail meant that, when writing his books on chess, he did not rely on secondary sources,

but would travel to check the original in, say, the Royal Library of the Netherlands in the Hague.

Besides chess

 Timothy enjoyed visiting places of cultural and scenic interest and appreciated art and classical music, particularly opera.

He is survived by his sister, Margaret, three nieces and two nephews."

Source: Dutch Website www.ARVES.org

Others: 15 endgame studies by him are slected on the Website ARVES