Sir Edward Elgar's connections with Harrogate are surprisingly strong and Viv Hardwick chats to his great-nephew Mark Grafton about 150th anniversary celebrations which will be a major part of the year's Harrogate Festival.

WHILE it appears fitting that the Harrogate-based relatives of Sir Edward Elgar should be sponsoring his 150th anniversary celebrations at the city's famous festival, the arrangements actually came about by chance.

Elgar's great-nephew Mark Grafton, owner of James Brindley the interior designers, explains that it was only when one of his sons began chatting to a festival organiser about Elgar's 50-year relationship with Harrogate that the family connection was revealed.

He says: "Edward's sister, called Pollie, is my grandmother and her son, Roland Elgar Grafton, was my father. So he was my great-uncle. Our festival involvement began with the organisers, who had realised quite independently from ourselves that it was the 150th anniversary of his birth, about 18 months ago and they started planning then. By coincidence our interior design company was doing work for one of the committee members and it came up in conversation between the lady and my son, Richard, about the Elgar section of the festival. My son obviously said that our family was related and as a result the chief executive of the festival, William Culver-Dodds, got in touch.

"When he put to me the programme they were planning I got very excited and said we'd like to be involved and, if possible, sponsor something. And it grew like Topsy from there and we are sponsoring the gala concert and Wood Magic concert."

So how would his composing ancestor view the celebrations?

"I would think he would be quite delighted because it's being covered in some depth across the country and also across Europe and America. So I can see no reason why he wouldn't be very happy," explains Mark who attended the June 2 celebrations at Worcester last weekend which is Elgar's actual birthday.

"His connection with Harrogate was as a visitor and he enjoyed coming here and I suspect he took the waters and certainly walked in the Valley Gardens where there is an Elgar Walk named after him. Subsequently he became friendly with Doctor Buck, who was a doctor in Settle, and they wrote a series of letters and were friends for about 50 years. Edward would come to Leeds or Harrogate and travel on to Settle and stay with him and they used to walk the Yorkshire Dales for many years," he says. The move by the Grafton family to Harrogate was also pure coincidence with Mark's father deciding to leave Worcester for Manchester and later started a business in Yorkshire.

"When I got married I moved to Harrogate and my two brothers still live in Wetherby, so that part of the story is pure coincidence. Elgar came to Harrogate many times so, to some extent, I've followed in his footsteps."

Items that the Grafton family are putting on show at the festival include the proof records of music Elgar composed and conducted at Abbey Road Studios on a hard wax disk dating back, in some cases, to 1910 and there's also a violin concerto record, signed by Yehudi Menuhin, plus Elgar's microscope, a piece of music score and some ashtrays. "The ashtrays don't sound very interesting but one of Edward's hobbies was chemistry and he nearly blew himself up twice and these were brass cigar ashtrays which he decided to chrome plate and he was successful," says Mark who also has a wedding photo of his parents featuring Elgar and a signed photograph of his great-uncle, taken in 1932, two years before he died.

The Elgar collection will be on display at James Brindleys store in James Street , Harrogate , before the festival and then shown at the Crown Hotel and Harrogate Conference Centre.

He describes Elgar as a complex person who "is often portrayed as almost a schizophrenic which is grossly unfair. He certainly had his periods of unbelieving of himself as a composer but I don't think he was as miserable as portrayed. My eldest cousin Margaret met him and they used to play what he called japes in the garden and he was a lot of fun. He had his darker moments but I think too much is made of those personally. I would be delighted to see him portrayed more as a genial sort of person, who he was. My father, who knew him very well, always referred to him in this sort of way rather than a moody depressive that some of the biographers have liked to portray. That tends to be more newsworthy than japes."

Elgar didn't gain great fame until the age of 40 when success came thick and fast. "I think he had some adapting at first but, subsequently, I think he enjoyed the notoriety."

The composer was a betting man and there is one story that he once heard Menuhin play for five minutes before telling him "that's marvellous and I'm off to the races". He was such a fan of Wolverhampton Wanderers than he composed a piece of music for the club which was resurrected a few years ago.

"He never forgot his roots and his birthplace down in Broadheath near Worcester is basically a two-bedroom labourer's cottage and that now is the birthplace museum, quite a large building that stands behind the cottage. It's quite a shrine," says Mark who sits on the Elgar Foundation committee.

* Sunday July 29, Crown Hotel, Harrogate: Elgar's Yorkshire, an illustrated talk by Andrew Neill, chairman of the Elgar Society, 3.30pm.

Wood Magic featuring Medici Quartet, Ian Brown on piano with James Bolam and Susan Jameson as narrators, 8pm. Box office: 0845-130-884.