James Harding

Who was James Harding?

James Harding was a writer on music and theatre with a particular interest in 19th and early 20th century French subjects and popular British music.

He was born in Bath, but the family moved to Trowbridge, and went on to study French at Bristol University also spending time at the Sorbonne in Paris. He undertook national service in the RAF, but through an accidental hand grenade detonation lost hearing in his left ear. After the war, he worked as a copywriter with Clarks in Somerset, then moved to advertising agencies in London. He wrote a column for the News of the World with the pseudonym Jane Dunbar. He married and had a son and a daughter.

In 1969 he changed his career and became a Lecturer in French at Woolwich Polytechnic, where he taught for 25 years. He obtained a doctorate from Birkbeck College in 1973 with his thesis on the French diarist Paul Léautaud, and published in 1975 wrote a book Lost Illusions: Paul Léautaud and his World.