 At Hastings, there were good results in 1977/78 (a share of fifth in a strong field) and in 1983/84, when he shared third place (after joint winners Karlsson and Jon Speelman).Aside from his academic and chess activities, he wrote the mainframe computer game "Brand X" with Peter Killworth, which was later rewritten for Windows and released commercially as Philosopher's Quest.Better known by his middle name, Jonathan, he is the son of the Jewish astronomer Leon Mestel and has been married since 1982 to Anna O´Donovan.