Arthur John Roycroft (born 25 July 1929, London) is an English chess endgame study composer and author.

Roycroft remained its chief editor until 2007 when Harold van der Heijden took over.

[3] He also advised Ken Thompson in writing programs for endgame data bases with four and five pieces.

From April 1984 to October 1985 he was seconded to Donald Michie (Machine Intelligence Research Unit, Edinburgh, followed by The Turing Institute, Glasgow).

[5] He was married to Betty Roycroft for nearly 60 years until her death in July 2020, and they have two grown up children, Jonathan - who is Director of Sports at Oxford University and Katherine - who lives in Italy and runs her own private language school.