Sir Philip Stuart Milner-Barry (20 September 1906 – 25 March 1995) was a British

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...

player, chess writer, World War II codebreaker and

civil servant The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil servants hired on professional merit rather than appointed or elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leaders ...

. He represented England in chess both before and after World War II. He worked at

Bletchley Park Bletchley Park is an English country house and estate in Bletchley, Milton Keynes (Buckinghamshire) that became the principal centre of Allied code-breaking during the Second World War. The mansion was constructed during the years following ...

during World War II, and was head of " Hut 6", a section responsible for deciphering messages which had been encrypted using the German Enigma machine. He was one of four leading codebreakers at Bletchley to petition the then-

Prime Minister A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister is ...

Winston Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from ...

directly for more resources for their work. After the war he worked in the

Treasury A treasury is either *A government department related to finance and taxation, a finance ministry. *A place or location where treasure, such as currency or precious items are kept. These can be state or royal property, church treasure or i ...

, and later administered the

British honours system In the United Kingdom and the British Overseas Territories, personal bravery, achievement, or service are rewarded with honours. The honours system consists of three types of award: *Honours are used to recognise merit in terms of achievement a ...

. In chess, he represented England in international tournaments, and lent his name to four opening variations.

Early life and education

Born in

Hendon Hendon is an urban area in the Borough of Barnet, North-West London northwest of Charing Cross. Hendon was an ancient manor and parish in the county of Middlesex and a former borough, the Municipal Borough of Hendon; it has been part of Gre ...

, London, Philip Stuart was the second of six children to a schoolteacher, Edward Leopold Milner-Barry, who died in 1917, and his wife, Edith Mary.Ralph Erskine, "Barry, Sir (Philip) Stuart Milner- (1906–1995)" in the

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography The ''Dictionary of National Biography'' (''DNB'') is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history, published since 1885. The updated ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (''ODNB'') was published on 23 September ...

, 2004"Sir Stuart Milner-Barry – Obituary", ''The Times'', 28 March 1995 A talented chess player, he won the first British Boys' Championship in 1923.William Hartston
"Obituary: Sir Stuart Milner-Barry"

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publish ...

, 29 March 1995 He was a pupil at

Cheltenham College ("Work Conquers All") , established = , closed = , type = Public school Independent School Day and Boarding School , religion = Church of England , president = , head_label = Head , head = Nicola Hugget ...

, and won a scholarship to

Trinity College Trinity College may refer to: Australia * Trinity Anglican College, an Anglican coeducational primary and secondary school in , New South Wales * Trinity Catholic College, Auburn, a coeducational school in the inner-western suburbs of Sydney, New ...

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

, where he obtained firsts in

classics Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of Classical Greek and Roman literature and their related original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Classics ...

and moral sciences. He represented Cambridge in chess. At Cambridge, he befriended another chess player, C.H.O'D. (Hugh) Alexander, and composed a number of chess puzzles.William Hartston
"Chess"
''

'', 30 March 1995 Between 1929 and 1938 he was a city

stockbroker A stockbroker is a regulated broker, broker-dealer, or registered investment adviser (in the United States) who may provide financial advisory and investment management services and execute transactions such as the purchase or sale of stock ...

, although he was unhappy with the work. From 1938, he was the chess correspondent for ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' ( ...

'', succeeded in 1945 by

Harry Golombek Harry Golombek OBE (1 March 1911 – 7 January 1995) was a British chess player, chess author, and wartime codebreaker. He was three times British chess champion, in 1947, 1949, and 1955 and finished second in 1948. He was born in Lambeth to ...

Early chess contributions

He made his debut in international-class chess at the strong London 1932 tournament, which World Champion

Alexander Alekhine Alexander Aleksandrovich Alekhine, ''Aleksándr Aleksándrovich Alékhin''; (March 24, 1946) was a Russian and French chess player and the fourth World Chess Champion, a title he held for two reigns. By the age of 22, Alekhine was already a ...

won. Milner-Barry's best results in international competition were achieved in three straight years at the

Margate Margate is a seaside town on the north coast of Kent in south-east England. The town is estimated to be 1.5 miles long, north-east of Canterbury and includes Cliftonville, Garlinge, Palm Bay and Westbrook. The town has been a significan ...

tournaments from 1937 to 1939, and at

Hastings Hastings () is a large seaside town and borough in East Sussex on the south coast of England, east to the county town of Lewes and south east of London. The town gives its name to the Battle of Hastings, which took place to the north-west ...

1938. In all four events he finished just above the middle against strong fields, with performance ratings (as calculated by

Chessmetrics Chessmetrics is a system for rating chess players devised by Jeff Sonas. It is intended as an improvement over the Elo rating system. Implementation Chessmetrics is a weighted average of past performance. The score considers a player's win percen ...

) between 2538 and 2565. This places him at a solid

International Master FIDE titles are awarded by the international chess governing body FIDE (''Fédération Internationale des Échecs'') for outstanding performance. The highest such title is Grandmaster (GM). Titles generally require a combination of Elo rating and ...

standard, although he never received this title. He reached as high as No. 65 in the world between June and August 1941, according to Chessmetrics, which ranks historical chess performances retrospectively, using modern algorithms. He represented England in chess, and played in the international

Chess Olympiad The Chess Olympiad is a biennial chess tournament in which teams representing nations of the world compete. FIDE organises the tournament and selects the host nation. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, FIDE held an Online Chess Olympiad in 2020 an ...

s of

1937 Events January * January 1 – Anastasio Somoza García becomes President of Nicaragua. * January 5 – Water levels begin to rise in the Ohio River in the United States, leading to the Ohio River flood of 1937, which continues into ...

and

1939 This year also marks the start of the Second World War, the largest and deadliest conflict in human history. Events Below, the events of World War II have the "WWII" prefix. January * January 1 ** Third Reich *** Jews are forbidden to ...

. The latter tournament, held in

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest ...

, coincided with Britain's declaration of war on Germany in September 1939. Milner-Barry, with teammates who included Hugh Alexander (at that time the

British chess champion The British Chess Championships are organised by the English Chess Federation. The main tournament incorporates the British Championship, the English Chess Championships and the British Women's Chess Championship so it is possible, although it has ...

) and Harry Golombek, abandoned the tournament unfinished, and returned to Britain. His full Olympiad results are listed later in the article.

Bletchley Park

Upon their return, all three soon joined the

Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) Government Communications Headquarters, commonly known as GCHQ, is an intelligence and security organisation responsible for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance (IA) to the government and armed forces of the Uni ...

. Milner-Barry was recruited by mathematician

Gordon Welchman William Gordon Welchman (15 June 1906 – 8 October 1985) was a British mathematician. During World War II, he worked at Britain's secret codebreaking centre, "Station X" at Bletchley Park, where he was one of the most important contributors. ...

, who had been his contemporary at Trinity College; in turn Milner-Barry recruited Hugh Alexander. Arriving in early 1940, he joined Welchman's " Hut 6" section, whose task was to solve the Enigma cipher machine as used by the

German Army The German Army (, "army") is the land component of the armed forces of Germany. The present-day German Army was founded in 1955 as part of the newly formed West German ''Bundeswehr'' together with the ''Marine'' (German Navy) and the ''Luftwaf ...

and

Air Force An air force – in the broadest sense – is the national military branch that primarily conducts aerial warfare. More specifically, it is the branch of a nation's armed services that is responsible for aerial warfare as distinct from an ...

. In 1993, Milner-Barry wrote that "to this day I could not claim that I fully understood how the machine worked, let alone what was involved in the problems of breaking and reading the Enigma cipher". Nonetheless, with his knowledge of the German language, he made a study of the decrypts and found that they contained stereotyped patterns and forms of address that could be exploited as " cribs" – reliable guesses for the plain language message that matched a given piece of encrypted text. Finding reliable cribs was a critical task for Hut 6, as Enigma was broken primarily with the aid of "

bombe The bombe () was an electro-mechanical device used by British cryptologists to help decipher German Enigma-machine-encrypted secret messages during World War II. The US Navy and US Army later produced their own machines to the same functi ...

s", large electromechanical machines which automatically searched for parts of the correct settings. Bombes were reliant on a suitable crib in order to succeed. In autumn 1940, Milner-Barry was put in charge of the "Crib Room". He was

billet A billet is a living-quarters to which a soldier is assigned to sleep. Historically, a billet was a private dwelling that was required to accept the soldier. Soldiers are generally billeted in barracks or garrisons when not on combat duty, alth ...

ed with Alexander, who was working in

Hut 8 Hut 8 was a section in the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park (the British World War II codebreaking station, located in Buckinghamshire) tasked with solving German naval ( Kriegsmarine) Enigma messages. The section was ...

, the counterpart to Hut 6 working on German Naval Enigma. Their close friendship let them easily resolve the competing needs of their sections for the limited available

time. By October 1941, he was deputy head of Hut 6 under Welchman.David Kahn, ''Seizing the Enigma'', 1991, pp. 186–88 At this time, Bletchley Park was experiencing a shortage of clerical staff which was delaying the work on Enigma, and the management of GCCS appeared unable to obtain the resources needed. This affected both Hut 6 and Hut 8, which was run by mathematician

Alan Turing Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist. Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical ...

with Hugh Alexander as his deputy. Together, Welchman, Milner-Barry, Turing and Alexander bypassed the

chain of command A command hierarchy is a group of people who carry out orders based on others' authority within the group. It can be viewed as part of a power structure, in which it is usually seen as the most vulnerable and also the most powerful part. Milit ...

and wrote a memorandum directly to the

, outlining their difficulties. It fell to Milner-Barry to deliver the message to

10 Downing Street 10 Downing Street in London, also known colloquially in the United Kingdom as Number 10, is the official residence and executive office of the first lord of the treasury, usually, by convention, the prime minister of the United Kingdom. Along w ...

in person, on 21 October 1941. The next day, Churchill responded, "Action this day: Make sure they have all they want on extreme priority and report to me that this has been done." Within a month their needs were being met. In autumn 1943, Milner-Barry took over as head of Hut 6, which by that time had grown to over 450 staff, Welchman having been appointed the Assistant Director of Mechanisation at Bletchley Park. He remained in charge until the end of the war, presiding over a number of technical challenges presented by the introduction of extra security devices to the German Enigma, including the Enigma Uhr and a rewireable "reflector" rotor. His entry in the

notes that, "although he increasingly felt that Hut 6 was on the verge of losing the ability to decode Enigma, it held on until the end of the war, and this was due in no small part to his gifted leadership." The official history of Hut 6, written immediately after the end of World War II, comments on his early "most vital technical achievement" in finding cribs, and on his "administrative and diplomatic talents" in his later role as head of the section.

After World War II

Milner-Barry joined the

in 1945 with the grade of Principal. In 1947, he married Thelma Tennant Wells, with whom he had a son and two daughters. The same year, he was promoted to Assistant Secretary, and

Under-secretary Undersecretary (or under secretary) is a title for a person who works for and has a lower rank than a secretary (person in charge). It is used in the executive branch of government, with different meanings in different political systems, and is al ...

in 1954. Apart from a stint in the Ministry of Health from 1958 to 1960, he remained with the Treasury until 1966, when, aged 60, he had reached the normal retirement age for the civil service. He was persuaded instead to carry on as a ceremonial officer administering the

honours system An order is a visible honour awarded by a sovereign state, monarch, dynastic house or organisation to a person, typically in recognition of individual merit, that often comes with distinctive insignia such as collars, medals, badges, and sashe ...

. In this role, he supported the

knighthood A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state (including the Pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the church or the country, especially in a military capacity. Knighthood finds origins in the ...

s of P. G. Wodehouse and

Noël Coward Sir Noël Peirce Coward (16 December 189926 March 1973) was an English playwright, composer, director, actor, and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what ''Time'' magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and ...

. Milner-Barry eventually retired in 1977. He was appointed OBE in 1946 for his work in World War II, CB in 1962, and KCVO in 1975.

Later chess contributions

He had also continued to play chess, competing in the 10th Chess Olympiad and

12th Chess Olympiad The 12th Chess Olympiad (, ''12-ya Shakhmatnaya olimpiada''), organized by the FIDE and comprising an openAlthough commonly referred to as the ''men's division'', this section is open to both male and female players. team tournament, as well as se ...

in 1952 and 1956. The 1956 Olympiad trip to Moscow was risky, since Britain and the

USSR The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nati ...

, which had been allies during World War II, were by then locked into the

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because t ...

, and Milner-Barry's wartime codebreaking knowledge would have been of great interest to the Soviets; the very fact that Britain had broken German codes on a massive scale was kept secret until 1974, when Frederick Winterbotham's book ''The Ultra Secret'' was published. He placed second in the British Chess Championship at Hastings 1953 (finishing behind only Daniel Yanofsky), with a score of 8/11; this would be his best result in British Championships. He was president of the

British Chess Federation The English Chess Federation (ECF) is the governing chess organisation in England. It is affiliated to FIDE. The ECF was formed in 2004 as one of the more localised successors to the British Chess Federation (BCF), an organisation founded in 1904 ...

between 1970 and 1973, competed in the British Championship as late as 1978, and was still competing in club and county-level tournaments and matches into his 80s. His obituary in ''

'' recalled his "savagely effective attacking style, honed to perfection through a series of 'serious friendly games' against his old rival Hugh Alexander". In 1972,

George Koltanowski George Koltanowski (also "Georges"; 17 September 1903 – 5 February 2000) was a Belgian-born American chess player, promoter, and writer. He was informally known as "Kolty". Koltanowski set the world's blindfold record on 20 September 1937 ...

wrote that, "his style was very pleasing to spectators because he was always looking for dangerous continuations and quite often he found them!" His name is associated with four

chess opening A chess opening or simply an opening is the initial stage of a chess game. It usually consists of established theory; the other phases are the middlegame and the endgame. Many opening sequences have standard names such as the "Sicilian Defen ...

variations: * Milner-Barry Variation of the

Nimzo-Indian Defence The Nimzo-Indian Defence is a chess opening characterised by the moves: :1. d4 Nf6 :2. c4 e6 :3. Nc3 Bb4 Other move orders, such as 1.c4 e6 2.Nc3 Nf6 3.d4 Bb4, are also feasible. In the ''Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings'', the Nimzo-Indian ...

('' ECO'' E33): 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.Qc2 Nc6 * Milner-Barry Gambit in the

French Defence The French Defence is a chess opening characterised by the moves: :1. e4 e6 This is most commonly followed by 2.d4 d5, with Black intending ...c5 soon after, attacking White's and gaining on the . The French has a reputation for solidity ...

(''ECO'' C02): 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 c5 4.c3 Nc6 5.Nf3 Qb6 6.Bd3 cxd4 7.cxd4 Bd7 8.0-0!? Nxd4 9.Nxd4 Qxd4 10.Nc3 * Milner-Barry Variation in the

Petroff Defence Petrov's Defence or the Petrov Defence (also called Petroff Defence, Petrov's Game, Russian Defence, or Russian Game – russian: Русская партия) is a chess opening characterised by the following moves: :1. e4 e5 :2. Nf3 Nf6 Tho ...

(''ECO'' C42): 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Nxe5 d6 4.Nf3 Nxe4 5.Qe2 Qe7 6.d3 Nf6 7.Bg5 Nbd7 * Milner-Barry Variation in the

King's Gambit The King's Gambit is a chess opening that begins with the moves: :1. e4 e5 :2. f4 White offers a pawn to divert the black e-pawn. If Black accepts the gambit, White has two main plans. The first is to play d4 and Bxf4, regaining the gambit ...

(''ECO'' C31): 1.e4 e5 2.f4 d5 3.Nc3

Olympiad results

Milner-Barry's detailed results while competing for England in chess Olympiads are as follows: * Stockholm 1937: board 3, 3/9 (+2−5=2) * Buenos Aires 1939: board 3, 4/5 (+3−0=2) * Helsinki 1952: board 3, 5½/12 (+2−3=7) * Moscow 1956: board 4, 6/12 (+5−5=2) Overall, he scored (+12−13=13), 18½/38, for 48.7 per cent.

Final years

In 1985, Milner-Barry fiercely defended the reputation of Gordon Welchman, who had come under posthumous criticism for publishing details about the wartime work of Hut 6. In 1992, echoing his wartime visit to 10 Downing Street, Milner-Barry was a member of a party who delivered a petition to the Prime Minister calling on the government to help preserve Bletchley Park, which was then under threat from demolition. He died on 25 March 1995 in

Lewisham Hospital University Hospital Lewisham (formerly known as Lewisham Hospital) is a teaching hospital run by Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust and serving the London Borough of Lewisham. It is now affiliated with King's College London and forms part of the Ki ...

, London. A

memorial service A funeral is a ceremony connected with the final disposition of a corpse, such as a burial or cremation, with the attendant observances. Funerary customs comprise the complex of beliefs and practices used by a culture to remember and respect th ...

was held for him at

Westminster Abbey Westminster Abbey, formally titled the Collegiate Church of Saint Peter at Westminster, is an historic, mainly Gothic church in the City of Westminster, London, England, just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is one of the United ...

on 15 June."Sir Stuart Milner-Barry – Memorial service",

, 16 June 1995 There is a conference room named after him at the Civil Service Club, 13 – 15 Great Scotland Yard, London SW1A 2HJ.

References

External links

The Papers of Sir (Philip) Stuart Milner-Barry
held at

Churchill Archives Centre The Churchill Archives Centre (CAC) at Churchill College at the University of Cambridge is one of the largest repositories in the United Kingdom for the preservation and study of modern personal papers. It is best known for housing the papers of ...

*
Milner-Barry and his Attack

West London Chess Club Gazette February 1946
(PDF)
Remembering Sir Stuart Milner-Barry
{{DEFAULTSORT:Milner-Barry, Stuart 1906 births 1995 deaths Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge British chess players Civil servants in HM Treasury Civil servants in the Ministry of Health (United Kingdom) Bletchley Park people People educated at Cheltenham College British non-fiction writers British chess writers English stockbrokers People from Hendon Chess theoreticians Chess Olympiad competitors Knights Commander of the Royal Victorian Order Companions of the Order of the Bath Officers of the Order of the British Empire British male writers Foreign Office personnel of World War II 20th-century chess players 20th-century English businesspeople Male non-fiction writers