William Winter was a British chess

Chess

Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...

 player. He won the British Open Chess Championship in 1934 and the British Chess Championship

British Chess Championship

The British Chess Championship is organised by the English Chess Federation. There are separate championships for men and women. Since 1923 there have been sections for juniors, and since 1982 there has been an over-sixty championship. The championship venue usually changes every year and has been...

 in 1935 and 1936. An acolyte of Siegbert Tarrasch

Siegbert Tarrasch

Siegbert Tarrasch was one of the strongest chess players and most influential chess teachers of the late 19th century and early 20th century....

, his sound, strategic play enabled him to defeat a number of the world's top players, including David Bronstein

David Bronstein

David Ionovich Bronstein was a Soviet chess grandmaster, who narrowly missed becoming World Chess Champion in 1951. Bronstein was described by his peers as a creative genius and master of tactics...

, Aron Nimzowitsch

Aron Nimzowitsch

Aron Nimzowitsch was a Russian-born Danish unofficial chess grandmaster and a very influential chess writer...

 and Milan Vidmar

Milan Vidmar

Milan Vidmar was a Slovene electrical engineer, chess player, chess theorist, philosopher, and writer. He was a specialist in power transformers and transmission of electric current.- Biography :...

. Unfortunately, his health and tactical play were insufficiently strong to enable him to repeat these victories on a consistent basis.

Life and career

Winter was a widely respected author of chess books and was a nephew of J. M. Barrie

J. M. Barrie

Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM was a Scottish author and dramatist, best remembered today as the creator of Peter Pan. The child of a family of small-town weavers, he was educated in Scotland. He moved to London, where he developed a career as a novelist and playwright...

, the creator of Peter Pan

Peter Pan

Peter Pan is a character created by Scottish novelist and playwright J. M. Barrie . A mischievous boy who can fly and magically refuses to grow up, Peter Pan spends his never-ending childhood adventuring on the small island of Neverland as the leader of his gang the Lost Boys, interacting with...

. Winter was also a Communist. His over-the-board and real-life characters were in stark contrast to each other. Harry Golombek

Harry Golombek

Harry Golombek OBE , was a British chess International Master and honorary grandmaster, chess arbiter, and chess author. He was three times British chess champion, in 1947, 1949, and 1955 and finished second in 1948. He became a grandmaster in 1985.He was the chess correspondent of The Times...

 described his play as "classic, scientific and sober; away from the board, he was revolutionary, illogically moved by his emotions (he contrived to be both a fervent communist and a staunch patriot) and, more often than not, drunk".

Winter has the distinction of being the only British Champion to have served time in prison (for his political activities). His memoirs were serialised in CHESS magazine

CHESS magazine

CHESS magazine , also called CHESS and previously called CHESS Monthly, is a chess magazine published monthly in the UK by Chess and Bridge Limited. CHESS was founded by Baruch Harold Wood in 1935 in Sutton Coldfield. Wood edited it until 1988, when it was taken over by Pergamon Press and changed...

in the late 1950s.

Due to the outbreak of World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, he had to break and then resume his law studies. During his time there, he was the champion of Cambridge University.

Winter played in four Olympiads

Chess Olympiad

The Chess Olympiad is a biennial chess tournament in which teams from all over the world compete against each other. The event is organised by FIDE, which selects the host nation.-Birth of the Olympiad:The first Olympiad was unofficial...

 in 1930

3rd Chess Olympiad

The 3rd Chess Olympiad, organized by the FIDE and comprising an open and women's tournament, as well as several events designed to promote the game of chess, took place between July 13 and July 27, 1930, in Hamburg, Germany...

, 1931

4th Chess Olympiad

The 4th Chess Olympiad, organized by the Fédération Internationale des Échecs and comprising an open and women's tournament, as well as several events designed to promote the game of chess, took place between July 11 and July 26, 1931, in Prague, Czechoslovakia...

, 1933

5th Chess Olympiad

The 5th Chess Olympiad, organized by the FIDE and comprising an open and women's tournament, as well as several events designed to promote the game of chess, took place between July 12 and July 23, 1933, in Folkestone, United Kingdom...

, and 1935

6th Chess Olympiad

The 6th Chess Olympiad, organized by the FIDE and comprising an open and women's tournament, as well as several events designed to promote the game of chess, took place between August 16 and August 31, 1935, in Warsaw, Poland...

.

Books by Winter

• Chess for Match Players, originally published in 1936 by Lawrence & Wishart; re-published in 1951 by Carroll and Nicholson and in 1965 by Dover Publications
  Dover Publications
  Dover Publications is an American book publisher founded in 1941 by Hayward Cirker and his wife, Blanche. It publishes primarily reissues, books no longer published by their original publishers. These are often, but not always, books in the public domain. The original published editions may be...
  
  .
• Kings of Chess Hardinge Simpole Chess Classics
• The world chess championship : 1951; Botvinnik v. Bronstein. with R. G. Wade, Turnstile Press

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