History

© New Zealand Chess Federation Inc 2022

Listener Columns

Listener Columns

After moving to England to seek a career as a chess professional in the 1970s, future grandmaster Murray Chandler produced a weekly column for the New Zealand Listener. In those days, the Listener had a monopoly on television and radio listings guaranteeing a huge circulation. The magazine was a national institution and the column gave chess mainstream media exposure we can only dream of today.

Scanning the columns was a big job, but happily in July 2021 the last column was scanned and presented here. The cuttings (from Murray's personal memorabilia collection) do not necessarily preserve the precise date of publication, but this will be listed whenever it is available. Murray reports that Listener sub-editors John Lilley and Bernard Carpinter, (the latter still an active player in New Zealand, and he also gives a good account of himself in one of the columns, "Freestyle" from 1978), were responsible for the pithy titles.

To complement the columns, some PGN files (for viewing on your computer) and interactive web pages are have been prepared, coverage will be extended as time allows.