21 Facts About Stuart Milner-Barry

Sir Philip Stuart Milner-Barry was a British chess player, chess writer, World War II codebreaker and civil servant.

Stuart Milner-Barry represented England in chess both before and after World War II.

Stuart Milner-Barry worked at Bletchley Park 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.

Stuart Milner-Barry was one of four leading codebreakers at Bletchley to petition the then-Prime Minister Winston Churchill directly for more resources for their work.

Stuart Milner-Barry was a pupil at Cheltenham College, and won a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he obtained firsts in classics and moral sciences.

Stuart Milner-Barry made his debut in international-class chess at the strong London 1932 tournament, which World Champion Alexander Alekhine won.

Stuart Milner-Barry 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.

Stuart Milner-Barry represented England in chess, and played in the international Chess Olympiads of 1937 and 1939.

Stuart Milner-Barry was recruited by mathematician Gordon Welchman, who had been his contemporary at Trinity College; in turn Stuart Milner-Barry recruited Hugh Alexander.

In 1993, Stuart 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".

Stuart Milner-Barry was billeted with Alexander, who was working in Hut 8, the counterpart to Hut 6 working on German Naval Enigma.

Together, Welchman, Stuart Milner-Barry, Turing and Alexander bypassed the chain of command and wrote a memorandum directly to the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, outlining their difficulties.

Stuart Milner-Barry 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.

Stuart Milner-Barry joined the Treasury in 1945 with the grade of Principal.

Stuart Milner-Barry was persuaded instead to carry on as a ceremonial officer administering the honours system.

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

Stuart Milner-Barry had continued to play chess, competing in the 10th Chess Olympiad and 12th Chess Olympiad in 1952 and 1956.

Stuart Milner-Barry was president of the British Chess Federation 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.

In 1985, Stuart 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, Stuart 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.

Stuart Milner-Barry died on 25 March 1995 in Lewisham Hospital, London.