Mark Knopfler's father finished second in the 1953 Scottish chess championship

This just in from our Trivia Desk...

His father, Erwin, had arrived in Glasgow in 1939 after fleeing Hungary. Erwin Knopfler was a chessplayer & was runner-up in the Scottish championship of 1953.

(Credit to the formidable Alan McGowan for establishing the identify of E. Knopfler in the cross-table below.)

(2/2) pic.twitter.com/xIqc2bmN6x

— Douglas Griffin (@dgriffinchess) September 19, 2020

And a word too for James Aitken, who not only won the title that year but beat all the other competitors in doing so. As well as winning this championship on ten occasions, he was a codebreaker at Bletchley Park during the war.