| Peter Clarke | |
| Full Name: | Peter Hugh Clarke |
| Country: | England |
| Birth Date: | 18 March 1933 |
| Birth Place: | London, England |
| Death Place: | Cornwall, England |
| Rating: | 2380 (July 1971) |
| Iccf Rating: | 2361 (July 1992) |
Peter Hugh Clarke (18 March 1933 – 11 December 2014) was an English chess player who held the titles of FIDE Master, International Correspondence Chess Grandmaster (1980), FIDE International Arbiter (1976) and Chess Olympiad individual silver medal winner (1956).
Peter Hugh Clarke started playing chess at the age of six. He twice won the London Boys' Chess Championship (1950, 1951). He participated in the British Chess Championship multiple times, winning five silver medals.[1] [2]
From 1959, Clarke worked as a chess journalist for the newspaper The Sunday Times and for the magazine British Chess Magazine. He is known as a biographer of Mikhail Tal (1961) and Tigran Petrosian (1964). Thanks to his good knowledge of the Russian language, he translated a book about Vasily Smyslov in 1958. In 1963, he wrote the book 100 Soviet Chess Miniatures.[3]
Clarke played for England in the Chess Olympiads:[4]
He also played for England in the World Student Team Chess Championship (1954, 1959)[5] and in the Clare Benedict Cup (1960–1961, 1963, 1965, 1967–1968) where he won a team silver medal (1960) and four bronze medals (1961, 1963, 1967, 1968).[6]
In later years, Clarke actively participated in correspondence chess tournaments. In 1977, he won the British Correspondence Chess Championship. He was awarded the title of International Correspondence Chess Master (IMC) in 1976, and the International Correspondence Chess Grandmaster (GMC) title four years later.