John Fairbairn

Who is John Fairbairn?

John T Fairbairn, born in Newcastle upon Tyne, lives in London, where he works as a political journalist, author and translator. His hobby is board games, particularly Go and shogi. As a specialist in Oriental Languages, he has translated and written many books about these games. He is also a developer and vendor of Go and shogi software.

He spent 11 years writing for the Shogi Association's magazine, providing translations and original research on the shogi variants. During this period he also worked on developing a shogi program, and also a xiangqi program.

Fairbairn has also been a Go player for over 30 years, holds the rank of amateur 3rd dan in the British Go Association, and has written many original features in Go World, including the first substantial expositions of ancient Chinese, ancient Korean and Tibetan Go in English.

Prior to moving to London, he taught a Japanese course, based on computer research, at Newcastle University.