Stuart Milner-Barry

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Stuart Milner-Barry
Born(1906-09-20)20 September 1906
Hendon, London
Died25 March 1995(1995-03-25) (aged 88)
Lewisham, London
Occupation(s)Codebreaker, civil servant, chess player
Title
  • Officer of the Order of the British Empire
  • Companion of the Order of the Bath
  • Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order

Sir Philip Stuart Milner-Barry

British honours system. In chess, he represented England in international tournaments, and lent his name to four opening
variations.

Early life and education

Born in

University College Galway and vice-principal of Newnham College, Cambridge.[3]

A talented chess player, Milner-Barry won the first British Boys' Championship in 1923.

C.H.O'D. (Hugh) Alexander, and composed a number of chess puzzles.[5] Between 1929 and 1938 he was a city stockbroker, although he was unhappy with the work.[2][6] From 1938, he was the chess correspondent for The Times, succeeded in 1945 by Harry Golombek.[1]

Early chess contributions

He made his debut in international-class chess at the strong London 1932 tournament, which World Champion Alexander Alekhine won. Milner-Barry's best results in international competition were achieved in three straight years at the Margate tournaments from 1937 to 1939, and at Hastings 1938. In all four events he finished just above the middle against strong fields, with performance ratings (as calculated by Chessmetrics) between 2538 and 2565.[7] This places him at a solid Grandmaster standard, although he never received this title. He reached as high as No. 65 in the world between June and August 1941, according to Chessmetrics, which ranks historical chess performances retrospectively, using modern algorithms.

He represented England in chess, and played in the international

British chess champion
) and Harry Golombek, abandoned the tournament unfinished, and returned to Britain. His full Olympiad results are listed later in the article.

Bletchley Park

The original Hut 6 building (photographed in 2004). Milner-Barry joined Hut 6 in early 1940, and worked in the section throughout World War II. He became head of Hut 6 in Autumn 1943.

Upon their return, all three soon joined the

German Army and Air Force.[1]

In 1993, Milner-Barry wrote that "to this day I could not claim that I fully understood how the machine worked, let alone what was involved in the problems of breaking and reading the Enigma cipher".

cribs" – reliable guesses for the plain language message that matched a given piece of encrypted text.[10] Finding reliable cribs was a critical task for Hut 6, as Enigma was broken primarily with the aid of "bombes", large electromechanical machines which automatically searched for parts of the correct settings. Bombes were reliant on a suitable crib in order to succeed. In autumn 1940, Milner-Barry was put in charge of the "Crib Room".[11]

Main article: Action This Day (memo)

He was

chain of command and wrote a memorandum directly to the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, outlining their difficulties.[13] It fell to Milner-Barry to deliver the message to 10 Downing Street in person, on 21 October 1941. The next day, Churchill responded, "Action this day: Make sure they have all they want on extreme priority and report to me that this has been done."[14] Within a month their needs were being met.[13]

In autumn 1943, Milner-Barry took over as head of

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography notes that, "although he increasingly felt that Hut 6 was on the verge of losing the ability to decode Enigma, it held on until the end of the war, and this was due in no small part to his gifted leadership."[1] The official history of Hut 6, written immediately after the end of World War II, comments on his early "most vital technical achievement" in finding cribs, and on his "administrative and diplomatic talents" in his later role as head of the section.[16]

After World War II

Milner-Barry joined the

knighthoods of P. G. Wodehouse and Noël Coward.[17] Milner-Barry eventually retired in 1977.[4] He was appointed OBE in 1946 for his work in World War II, CB in 1962, and KCVO in 1975.[1]

Later chess contributions

This section uses algebraic notation to describe chess moves.

He had also continued to play chess, competing in the

Frederick Winterbotham's book The Ultra Secret was published. He placed second in the British Chess Championship at Hastings 1953 (finishing behind only Daniel Yanofsky), with a score of 8/11; this would be his best result in British Championships.[18]

He was president of the

British Chess Federation between 1970 and 1973, competed in the British Championship as late as 1978,[4] and was still competing in club and county-level tournaments and matches into his 80s.[5] His obituary in The Independent recalled his "savagely effective attacking style, honed to perfection through a series of 'serious friendly games' against his old rival Hugh Alexander".[4] In 1972, George Koltanowski wrote that, "his style was very pleasing to spectators because he was always looking for dangerous continuations and quite often he found them!"[19] His name is associated with four chess opening
variations:

Nimzo-Indian Defence
Milner-Barry Variation
abcdefgh
8
a8 black rook
c8 black bishop
d8 black queen
e8 black king
h8 black rook
a7 black pawn
b7 black pawn
c7 black pawn
d7 black pawn
f7 black pawn
g7 black pawn
h7 black pawn
c6 black knight
e6 black pawn
f6 black knight
b4 black bishop
c4 white pawn
d4 white pawn
c3 white knight
a2 white pawn
b2 white pawn
c2 white queen
e2 white pawn
f2 white pawn
g2 white pawn
h2 white pawn
a1 white rook
c1 white bishop
e1 white king
f1 white bishop
g1 white knight
h1 white rook
8
77
66
55
44
33
22
11
abcdefgh
1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.Qc2 Nc6
  • Milner-Barry Variation of the Nimzo-Indian Defence (ECO E33): 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.Qc2 Nc6
  • Milner-Barry Gambit in the French Defence (ECO C02): 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 c5 4.c3 Nc6 5.Nf3 Qb6 6.Bd3 cxd4 7.cxd4 Bd7 8.0-0!? Nxd4 9.Nxd4 Qxd4 10.Nc3[4]
  • Milner-Barry Variation in the
    Petroff Defence
    (ECO C42): 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Nxe5 d6 4.Nf3 Nxe4 5.Qe2 Qe7 6.d3 Nf6 7.Bg5 Nbd7
  • Milner-Barry Variation in the King's Gambit (ECO C31): 1.e4 e5 2.f4 d5 3.Nc3

Olympiad results

Milner-Barry's detailed results while competing for England in chess Olympiads are as follows:

Overall, he scored (+12−13=13), 18½/38, for 48.7 per cent.[20]

Final years

In 1985, Milner-Barry fiercely defended the reputation of Gordon Welchman, who had come under posthumous criticism for publishing details about the wartime work of Hut 6.[2] In 1992, echoing his wartime visit to 10 Downing Street, Milner-Barry was a member of a party who delivered a petition to the Prime Minister calling on the government to help preserve Bletchley Park, which was then under threat from demolition.[21]

He died on 25 March 1995 in

Lewisham Hospital, London.[1] A memorial service was held for him at Westminster Abbey on 15 June.[22]

There is a conference room named after him[23] at the Civil Service Club, 13 – 15 Great Scotland Yard, London SW1A 2HJ.

References

  1. ^
    Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
    , 2004
  2. ^ a b c d "Sir Stuart Milner-Barry – Obituary", The Times, 28 March 1995
  3. ISBN 9781472295477
    .
  4. ^ a b c d e f g William Hartston, "Obituary: Sir Stuart Milner-Barry", The Independent, 29 March 1995
  5. ^ a b William Hartston, "Chess", The Independent, 30 March 1995
  6. ISBN 0-947712-34-8
  7. ^ http://www.chessmetrics.com Archived 14 April 2006 at the Wayback Machine, the Milner-Barry player file.
  8. ^ Stephen Budiansky, Battle of Wits, 2000, p. 137
  9. ^ Stuart Milner-Barry, "Hut 6: Early days", pp. 89–99 in Codebreakers: The Inside Story of Bletchley Park, edited by F. H. Hinsley, and Alan Stripp, Oxford University Press, 2003
  10. ^ Welchman, 1982, pp. 98, 110
  11. ^ Welchman, 1982, p. 120
  12. ^ Milner-Barry, 2003, p. 95–96
  13. ^ a b c David Kahn, Seizing the Enigma, 1991, pp. 186–88
  14. ^ pp. ix–xiii in Ralph Erskine and Michael Smith eds, Action this Day, 2001
  15. PRO
    HW 43/70, September 1945, p. 12
  16. ^ History of Hut 6, 1945, pp. 27–28
  17. ^ Alan Hamilton, "Bertie Wooster messed it up for his creator", The Times, 16 August 2002
  18. ^ http://www.chessmetrics.com Archived 14 April 2006 at the Wayback Machine, the Milner-Barry player file
  19. ^ George Koltanowski, With the Chess Masters, Falcon, 1972
  20. ^ Bartelski, Wojciech. "OlimpBase: Men's Chess Olympiads: Philip Stuart Milner-Barry". OlimpBase. Retrieved 20 October 2010.
  21. ISBN 0-7509-2355-5
    , pp. 84-85
  22. ^ "Sir Stuart Milner-Barry – Memorial service", The Times, 16 June 1995
  23. ISBN 978-1-5272-6019-1

External links

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