Leonard Barden's last Evening Standard column

[John Saunders]

Brexit and Bardexit on the same day. It's all too much.

[John Clarke]

Leonard says "dedicated to SJF" - would it be a breach of etiquette to ask who this is (or should it be obvious)?

Several players on chessgames.com with the initials SF, but none identifiable as SJF, and none as far as I can see meriting this sort of dedication. Unless it's a misprint for RJF ....

PS: chessgames has now put up Leonard's win over Kottnauer, referred to in earlier posts: https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1991366.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

There is a Chessbase article on this:

Leonard Barden's Evening Standard column ends after 63 years

Barden writes that the Evening Standard column has ended primarily due to budget cuts

Otherwise I might well have continued until I dropped, as has been a long tradition with English newspaper columnists from the time of Amos Burn and JH Blake and continued with Alexander, BH Wood, and Golombek.

[JustinHorton]

Has there been any mainstream news coverage? You would like to think so.

[NickFaulks]

Barden writes that the Evening Standard column has ended primarily due to budget cuts

A bit strange that this should happen under the current editor.

[JustinHorton]

That is not the worst point ever made.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

To explain (though most will understand the context), the current editor of the Evening Standard is George Osborne (former Chancellor of the Exchequer), whose chess credentials have been discussed here before (kids attending the London Chess Classic and when the Candidates was in London they held a reception at 11 Downing Street being the most obvious examples).

How many Evening Standard editors has Leonard worked for (dare I ask even met)?

If this list on Wikipedia is correct, then it is 13 editors:

1952: Percy Elland
1959: Charles Wintour
1976: Simon Jenkins
1978: Charles Wintour
1980: Louis Kirby
1986: John Leese
1991: Paul Dacre
1992: Stewart Steven
1996: Max Hastings
2002: Veronica Wadley
2009: Geordie Greig
2012: Sarah Sands
2017: George Osborne

[JustinHorton]

Twelve surely

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Oh, I missed that Wintour (yes, the father of Anna, the editor of Vogue) was in there for two stints. That is lucky, no unlucky 13!

[Jonathan Rogers]

It is always possible, I suppose, that when the editor is not a journalist and has ten or twelve other jobs on the go at the same time, that certain decisions eg regarding chess columns, are delegated to someone else and just appear in a bundle of unread literature in the editor's in box ?

[Kevin Thurlow]

"1952: Percy Elland
1959: Charles Wintour
1976: Simon Jenkins
1978: Charles Wintour
1980: Louis Kirby
1986: John Leese
1991: Paul Dacre
1992: Stewart Steven
1996: Max Hastings
2002: Veronica Wadley
2009: Geordie Greig
2012: Sarah Sands
2017: George Osborne"

Some of that somewhat motley crew have attracted negative comments from "Private Eye", and there has certainly been criticism of the current editor.

[Matt Mackenzie]

Oh, I missed that Wintour (yes, the father of Anna, the editor of Vogue) was in there for two stints. That is lucky, no unlucky 13!

Not to mention Patrick of that ilk too.

[Stewart Reuben]

Writing from Tenerife, I have only just learnt of the death of Leonard's Evening Standard column.

I don't note here any call to arms. Surely we can mount n avalanche of complaints, just as we did when Leonard's ES column was temporarily finished some years ago.
Being away, i am not in a position to m ount such a campaign. I need the editorial address for one thing. The editor is even a chessplayer, I met him at the London Chess Classic some years ago.

Danny Gormally notes the withering away of The Times column. I have noticed there is a poker column now in that section - written by BYRON JACOBS. I am delighted for him, but all such losses in the chess world must be veheently opposed.

[Leonard Barden]

In answer to some of the posts above:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... itor-talks

[John Clarke]

By one of those remarkable coincidences that do so much to spice one’s life, I was only last night leafing through a May 2017 copy of The Oldie, which carried a piece by Stephen Glover about the then-recent appointment of Mr Osborne. It made the same sort of gloomy prognostications about the Standard, predicting the severe cuts that have now eventuated.

Glover also speculated – incorrectly – that Osborne would attempt to be a part-time editor and cling on as an MP. (He would have been writing some time before the 2017 election was announced.) His closing sentence ran: “After a year or two, this unqualified and presumptuous man will be off to other pastures – leaving a struggling newspaper, and …. Evgeny Lebedev, far behind”.

Looks as though Mr Glover wasn't too far out about the length of Osborne's tenure, even though his departure might not be voluntary.