Hartston was born in Willesden, Middlesex, England, and attended the City of London School before studying Mathematics at Jesus College, Cambridge.
[5][6] He studied mathematics at Jesus College, Cambridge but did not complete his PhD on number theory as he spent too much time playing chess.
[7] From the early 1970s, Hartston made many TV appearances for the BBC,[8][9] usually in the role of expert commentator and analyst on world title matches, including Fischer-Spassky '72, Karpov-Korchnoi '78, Kasparov-Short '93 and Kasparov-Anand '95.
While continuing to write the Beachcomber column and other features for the Daily Express, he was also behind the launching of the now defunct wakkipedia.com Internet site of useless information.
[13] On 2 April 2013 it was reported that Hartston had "perfected" a formula for predicting the winner of the Grand National horse race, in a study commissioned by bookmaker William Hill.
[19] Hartston was the first of three British chess champions to be married to Woman Grandmaster Jana Bellin (née Malypetrova) (January 1970 in Cambridge).