what a disgrace! that is the only interesting part of the ES these days, all this crap about katie price, peter crouch, et.al, ad nauseam every bloody page?! surely they can fit half an inch of chess puzzle??

someone should start a petition and have everyone on chess.com sign it.

Leonard Barden is known to be an authority on the openings.I have an excellent book of his--A Guide To Chess Openings--first published 53 years ago.Chess magazine called it "the chess book event of the year" On the flyleaf there is  information of another four books by him and he was writing articles in the old Guardian when it was The  Manchester Guardian.

There is a nice chapter on Barden in Assiac's entertaining book from 1960--The Delights Of Chess--entiled " Walking Encyclopedia" which probably summed him up as a young man.

Leonard Barden is one of the unsung heroes of British chess.

@Vincent_Valentine - neither were computers I think!

Meanwhile in my local rag the other day a photo accompanying an article on leisure pursuits showed a chessboard... with White pawns on contiguous edges (i.e. an edge file and either the first or the eighth rank). Took great care to get that set up by someone who knew the first thing about the game, didn't they?

I've written an email to the given address. Another symptom of the general malaise affecting chess coverage in the UK - misrepresentation and a disorganised playing-base.

Its terrible chess has to fight for space even in a country like the UK which boasts of some of the greatest chess writers and players produced in the last 150 years.  A shame really.

i remember  years ago leonard adjudicating a last  round game  of mine. i  was  claiming a win which  i needed for equal first.he looked at it for about a minute and  declared it a draw. i  wasn;t happy but i  eventually realised that of  course he  was  correct.would be nice if  the  evening standard would give  their reasons for  axing  him.

Wow, I have a book he co-wrote with Heidenfeld, "Modern Chess Miniatures" - since that was published 50 years ago I'm slightly surprised to learn he's "only" 80. Anyway, this piece of news is a disgrace. :grr:

I can't believe they've done that. It seems that sudoku rules. That chess puzzle has been a part of my chess life for so many years and I have enjoyed the puzzles so much.

I'm certainly going to write in and complain.

One of my first chess books was written by Leonard Barden.  The oxymoronic title was:  An Introduction to Chess Moves and Tactics Simply Explained 

The book used descriptive notation, and I will never forget the example of "how to handle the double P-R3 man".

Gotta love old Leonard.  May he endure!

The internet wasn't even around when he got started.

That's a crying shame - it's a terrific column. I will certainly join the campaign to reinstate it. Thanks for drawing our attention to it.