James Harding

Writer who specialised in music and theatre
James Harding, who has died aged 78, shared his interest in French musical and theatrical culture through the 20 or so books he wrote, their subjects ranging from Saint-Saëns, Rossini and Gounod through French operetta to Maurice Chevalier and Jacques Tati. A French teacher in later life, he achieved this prolific output as a holiday activity.

He was born in Bath, soon moving to Trowbridge, where his father had inherited a small building business, and became a pupil at Trowbridge boys' high school. He went on to study French at Bristol University, spending some time at the Sorbonne in Paris. He did his national service in the RAF, where he was unfortunate to lose the hearing in his left ear through the accidental detonation of a hand grenade. This was a tragic loss for someone who was a gifted musician and a potential actor.

After the war, he was a copywriter with the Clarks shoe company in Somerset, graduating to various advertising agencies in London, and he wrote a column under the name of Jane Dunbar in the News of the World. He, his wife Gillian and their two children settled in London, with a seaside house in Kent.

Harding changed his career to teaching French at Woolwich Polytechnic (now Greenwich University), where he stayed for 25 years. In 1973 he achieved his doctorate from Birkbeck College London with his thesis on the diarist Paul Léautaud, and in 1975 wrote a book Lost Illusions: Paul Léautaud and his World. He was also a regular broadcaster and made an appearance on Desert Island Discs.

His book Saint-Saëns and His Circle (1965) has remained a standard reference, as have his studies of other composers and performers including Sacha Guitry, The Last Boulevardier (1968), Massenet (1970), Rossini (1971), Gounod (1973), Erik Satie (1975), Folies de Paris: The Rise and Fall of French Operetta (1979), Jacques Offenbach (1980), Maurice Chevalier (1982 ) and Jacques Tati; Frame by Frame (1984). His 1972 study, The Ox on the Roof, of the French musical activities in the 1920s of the composers, including Poulenc and Milhaud, who comprised Les Six is one of his most acute. His interest in musical theatre spilled over from purely French interests to produce equally readable studies of subjects as British as Ivor Novello (1987) and George Robey and The Music-Hall (1991). He also wrote on James Agate (1986), CB Cochran (1988), Gerald du Maurier: the Last Actor-Manager (1989) and Emlyn Williams (1993).

Latterly Harding discovered a new interest in Malaysia, which he visited for a month or more each year, teaching himself Malay and producing a book on P Ramlee, a famous film actor, director and songwriter. His article on the Cockney bookseller Fred Bason appeared in the October Oldie magazine.

He is survived by Gillian and his son and daughter.

· James Harding, writer and broadcaster, born May 30 1929; died June 21 2007