BCN wishes FIDE Master Bernard Cafferty best wishes on his 91st birthday, June 27th in 1934.

Bernard was born in Blackburn, Lancashire (his mother’s maiden name was Croft) migrating to Birmingham and now resides in Hastings, East Sussex and is a member of Hastings & St. Leonards Chess Club.

Sunnucks notes that he was British Junior Champion in 1952, British Correspondence Champion in 1959 and British Lighting Champion in 1966. He wrote a thesis on Chess in Schools for his University Education Diploma and is now a schoolmaster. His contribution to Anne’s Encyclopedia was on Education and Chess.

He was editor of British Chess Magazine from 1981 to 1991 and continued as Associate Editor until 2011 when FM Steve Giddins took over.

Here is the 1981 announcement (written by Harry Golombek, Chairman of Directors) of his appointment in the British Chess Magazine, Volume CI (101), Number 3, March, page 82 :

Here is his extensive Wikipedia entry

Bernard won the BCF President’s Award in 1991. Here follows the entry in the October 1991 issue of Chess Moves:

“Bernard Cafferty, who has been associated with the British Chess Magazine since 1981, was born in Blackburn in 1934 and after attending Birmingham University in 1951, became closely involved with Midlands chess until moving to Hastings.  After graduating in 1954, Bernard served two years of National Service in the Army, then worked in industry and for 9 years taught mathematics and Russian in a Birmingham grammar school. From 1970 until 1981 he was a freelance writer and translator. In 1981 he succeeded Brian Reilly as Editor of the British Chess Magazine and since that time has done an outstanding job in that capacity.

Bernard is well known as a translator from Russian; his work included Kotov’s Think Like a Grandmaster and Botvinnik’s Achieving the Aim: he is also the author of books on Tal and Spassky. He is well known as the contributor of chess puzzles to Oracle teletext and a chess columnist of the Sunday Times.

Bernard has been a highly successful player too. He was joint British Boys (Under-18) Champion in 1952. British Junior Champion in 1954, British Correspondence Champion in 1960 and won the British Lightning (10 seconds a move)  five times in the 1960s. He played regularly in the British Championship from 1957 to 1981, his best result being joint second in 1964. Hew won the Midlands Championship and Central Counties Championship many times.

Bernard Cafferty has made a unique contribution to British chess over these years.”

In the December 2010 issue (Volume CXXX (130), Number 12, pages 622 – 625 of British Chess Magazine there was a tribute to Bernard’s 30 years at BCM from editor FM Steve Giddins that was interview based :

Here is discussion of Bernard on the English Chess Forum

Here is the BritBase collection of Bernard’s games

In 2009 Bernard was interviewed by the privately published Chess Parrot whose editor was / is Basingstoke based James Pratt (who became BCMs editor from 2011 – 2015). Here is that previously unseen interview :