I think Nigel Short has always been the best, Michael Adams has never been in his league IMO (I know elo ratings say different).
Nigel Short, age 44, and back to the top !

He promotes chess quite well even though he's a bit controversial at times. With Michael Adams, he stays well under the radar. Very few people have heard of Adams considering he's been Britain's number 1 for years. I'd certainly never heard of him when I started to get interested in chess.

Quite a few non-chess players in Britain have heard of Short just because his WC match with Kasparov was well covered at the time, and was televised on C4.

See Short beat Karpov in 28 moves here:
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1068950
See Short beat Karpov in 36 moves here:
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1068949

"I played like God" was Short's comment after that second game v Karpov.
As always controversial, but highly entertaining.

Short was always a good defender good move after good move what i think now is he is a bit better attacker hense his rating rize

He is also now the oldest GM over 2700 being born in 1965. I think Gelfand is next, born in 1968. Anand and Ivanchuk were born in 1969.

Karpov has a big plus score against Short, in spite of losing the match they played. What is Short's peak rating ?

"I played like God" was Short's comment after that second game v Karpov.
As always controversial, but highly entertaining.
Nah. God plays like Short.

Karpov has a big plus score against Short, in spite of losing the match they played. What is Short's peak rating ?
According to Wikipedia it was 2712, reached in April 2004.
Nigel Short, at age 44, having had an amazing Staunton Memorial, is back to being Britain's highest rated Grandmaster, with a rating of over 2700.
Congratulations to him, and the rest of us oldies take heart !!