'Call to the soil' leads historian to his family's past and his own passion

He started recording bits of history as a child and only last week while burrowing into the depths of his cluttered desk came across something he had written during the war years.

"As well as scribbled short notes such as 'three air raids today', 'school closed' or 'slept in air raid shelter', I also read that it always snowed in late February - just as it did this year," he said.

Home was Dartford, Kent, and like most children at that time in the area, he and his sister were evacuated to Scotland to stay with the formidable "aunt Jennifer".

"Here I was, a little English boy having to go to school with children speaking a near-Glaswegian accent. It was quite a culture shock and the education system was very different. There was a tiered classroom with teacher Miss Brown's desk in the right hand corner. The far left corner at the top of the classroom was for the best pupil, hence the saying top of the class.

"On a Friday we had a test and when results were made known in the afternoon everyone was sat according to results.

"I was very pleased to eventually get the top place and remember Miss Brown saying: 'The Scots may have beaten the English at Bannockburn but the English have beaten the Scots at studies'.

The two children stayed until 1940, through the winter, when Mr Harding recorded he had "never seen snow up to my waist before".

"Ironically, when the war started properly we had been sent back home and stayed there and lived through the Battle of Britain and the Blitz.

"My father was in the Home Guard and patrolled Dartford Marshes. One night they thought they had spotted a German parachutist hiding in the marshes and prepared for their first enemy capture when they saw what they thought was a cigarette being smoked - it turned out to be a glow worm."

Mr Harding came to the Thirsk area when he retired in 1990, as his parents by now had moved to the Ayrshire coast.

"When father retired, my mother said that as she had spent all his working life in his part of the country, it was time to spend the rest in hers. We travelled regularly to visit them and we took to stopping off somewhere on the way as the journey was so long. We often stopped in Malton, Thirsk, and Richmond and took to taking holidays in the area, so got to know it very well."

When they decided to up sticks, they thought there would be no better place than North Yorkshire. They could not afford a house they liked in Thirsk and spotted an eighteenth century cottage in Kilvington, which they fell in love with and are still doing it up.

"There must have been some elements of a 'call to the soil', as my grandfather was a Yorkshireman and farmed in what my father called the Vale of Mowbray. He didn't know where that was, he thought it was in the Leeds area."

Tracing his ancestors, Mr Harding discovered that his great grandmother was baptised at Carlton Husthwaite and that his grandfather was born not many miles from there.

When Mr Harding left school, he wanted to study history, but his father dissuaded him, saying historians were "two a penny", so he qualified as a linguist.

He taught in France for some years before being called up for National Service.

"During the Korean war, the powers that be started to panic as all their translators at that time were Eastern Europeans and although they were all anti-communist, it was thought that they would be a security threat, so suitable people were seconded to go on a crash course in Russian.

"I was sent as a member of the Royal Navy to the now famous School for Spies on a crash Russian course."

Officially, this class was top secret and never existed. Its existence was only revealed at Christmas 2002 when a book was published and a television documentary written about it.

"Before this, I have given several talks to groups talking about my experiences when I have had to say 'I never met this person; he/she never existed; this never happened'."

This was followed by two years in London working in various other departments and establishments. At the end of the Korean war, Mr Harding went to university on a teaching course, and after gaining his teaching certificate worked in Ipswich for 12 years and then mid-Sussex.

"When I retired, my father wanted to know more about our family history. That started my research into our family tree and I discovered my family was associated with the Kirk family of Bilsdale."

He now traces family trees for other people.

"Once I retired, I had time to indulge my passion, history. I was a manqu, a French word for someone who has failed to find their true foothold - a frustrated historian.'

Once he and Margaret, his wife, were living in the district they looked about to see what was happening to get involved in the community and noticed that there was a talk on Thirsk's old yards by the late Tom Bumby, who at that time ran the civic society. At the meeting, an appeal was made for volunteers to help organise the next session. The Hardings volunteered and have been involved every since.

Mr Harding is now honorary secretary of the Museum Society and unofficial curator. He has helped form the museum into what it is today, a great tourist attraction. He spends hours cataloguing items donated to the museum.

From the many old photographs donated, he has compiled two books on Thirsk.

The first was jointly researched and compiled with Dr Peter Wyan, president of the Museum Society and one of the prime movers in the civic society.

At that time, many farms were being renovated and modernised and items were being thrown away. Dr Wyan rescued them and was looking for a place to store and catalogue them. At the same time, the building which is now the museum came up for sale, and as it was the birthplace of Thomas Lord, founder of Lord's cricket ground, it seemed an apt place for a museum. The museum opened in 1977.

Mr Harding gets many inquiries about historical incidents. The latest came in an indirect way, but he managed to find out the answer after a great deal of research.

"I got a call from the PA of a rear admiral surgeon who was to give a talk and wanted to know if we had any information on the surgeon who removed Nelson's arm - a Thomas Eshelby. Ship records showed he was born in Thirsk.

"He sent a signal to the chief executive of North Yorkshire County Council, who sent it to the records office in Northallerton, who sent it to the library in Thirsk and to the tourist information office, and then to me.

"With research, I was able to discover that yes, he had been born in Thirsk. His father had been a leather merchant and lived on St James Green."

He was aboard the ship in which Nelson sailed when he was dispatched to Santa Cruz to try to occupy the island so that when the enemy arrived with a reported treasure ship they would be waiting.

But the landing was heavily rebuffed. Nelson, unwilling to back off, led the landing party and jumped on to the shore and was hit by musket fire. A musket ball shattered his elbow. The landing was aborted. Nelson was carried to his flagship and the ship's surgeon, Thomas Eshelby, amputated the arm, without anaesthetic. Nothing much was known about the surgeon's later career.

Mr Harding's research showed that an illegitimate child was born to a woman from Northallerton. In those days, such a child was a charge on the rates, so the authorities tried to find the father to file a bastardy order on a Thomas Eshelby, the father.

"This is probably why Eshelby disappeared from Thirsk into the Navy so quickly. He had sown one too many wild oats."

One of Mr Harding's many talks is called A Ramble Through the Records, which is mainly a hotch-potch of "did you know?" items.

For instance, did you know that Thirsk had at one time a tame hermit who lived in the porch above the parish church porchway or that Thirsk had a spa at one time with three baths?

"I have found my true forte nowadays," he said.

Along with other members, Mr Harding is working towards celebrating the Museum Society's anniversary and the official launch at the museum of Thirsk's first blue plaque to identify historic buildings.

As the building was the birthplace of Thomas Lord, Robert Knight, the chief executive of the MCC, is to attend the ceremony in June