Keith Jessop, Keighley's deep-sea salvage diver, will next week give local people an insight into his colourful career. The world's most successful treasure hunter will give an illustrated talk at the Crescent Hotel in Ilkley.

And he will take along a replica of the first gold bar he brought up from the wreck of HMS Edinburgh in 1981.

Keith earned the nickname of "Goldfinder" when he raised 434 bars worth £44 million from the wreck, which had lay for almost 50 years at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean.

He last year published a best-selling autobiography of the same name, which revealed secrets of his life as a salvage expert.

Keith's talk at the hotel on Wednesday at 8pm will be accompanied by still photographs and extracts from documentary films about his exploits. He will recount his progress from being an "aquatic Steptoe and Son" retrieving scrap metal from wrecks off the Scottish coast to the hi-tech deep sea salvage of the Edinburgh.

Ilkley author Neil Hanson will speak the same evening about a true tale which inspired his best-selling book The Custom of the Sea.

Tickets for the evening cost £2.50 from the Grove Bookshop in Ilkley.

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