Happy Birthday, Leonard

[Stewart Reuben]

Leonard has informed us that the Evening Standard is discontinuing his online chess column at the end of this month. That is so sad and an act of utter vandalism.

[O.G. Urcan]

On 30 December Edward Winter reported in C.N. 9022 (http://www.chesshistory.com/winter):

"Mr Barden informs us that the Evening Standard has now agreed to prolong his chess column for a month, until the end of January 2015, to give time for a longer-term solution to be sought."

[John Townsend]

That sounds like good news. I wonder also what it would take to get the chess column restored to the printed version of the Evening Standard, which is available free at railway stations. Trains can take a long time without any chess or bridge ...

[Stewart Reuben]

Leonard wrote today to say the column was continuing. I was all a misunderstanding.
To get the column into the printed Evening Standard.
Possibly 1000 independent letters might do the trick.
Or work out a way for the newspaper to make income from people entering competitions.

[soheil_hooshdaran]

Happy birthday Mr Barden

[O.G. Urcan]

Leonard Barden has confirmed that his on-line "Evening Standard" chess column has been saved: http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/#9041._Mannerism

The column can be read at http://www.standard.co.uk/staticpage/chess/

[Geoff Chandler]

Stewart is correct:

"Possibly 1000 independent letters might do the trick."

Not emails, they can be deleted with a flick of the wrist.
Letters have to be opened, read and filed away by someone.

On another note.

I recently read that the longest running chess column was Hermann Helms (1870-1963)
who wrote a chess column for 62 years, from 1893 to 1955, in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

http://www.chess.com/article/view/records-in-chess

I thought Mr Barden had the record or was the Helms column paused during the
first and second World Wars and was not continuous.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Have a look at this article, Geoff:

http://en.chessbase.com/post/barden-on- ... ess-column

The link was posted earlier in the thread. Re-posting it now for those who missed it first time round.

[Stewart Reuben]

Geoff >Not emails, they can be deleted with a flick of the wrist. Letters have to be opened, read and filed away by someone.

That is only partially true. We have generated such pressure groups, using emails, and that had the required response. Suggesting 1000 would be needed is probably excessive as the Evenng Standard is a smaller newspaper.
5000 to get a dedicated chess series on terrestrial TV?

[Geoff Chandler]

Cheers Chris.

Missed it fiorst time around. Good Article

[Mick Norris]

Chessbase

According to our calculations Leonard Barden has been at it for sixty years and seven months – making him the longest running uninterrupted weekly chess column in the world and in history

Leonard's Evening Standard column is quite possibly the longest ever running daily column by a single journalist in any field of journalism

[Carl Hibbard]

Happy Birthday Leonard have a good one.

[Carl Hibbard]

Happy Birthday Leonard have a good one.

Ok a tad early this is about the article doh.