A HARRY Potter star and his friend who met as teenagers in York were stunned to discover an earlier link - they both had a narrow escape from the same wartime bomb as babies.
Leading actor David Bradley – famous worldwide for roles in the Harry Potter films and the global TV hit Game of Thrones, and beloved for stage performances in the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) - and Howard Hayden, who travelled the world himself during a career as a precision engineer, have known each other since their days as apprentices at Vickers Instruments in Haxby Road.
But, thanks to a memoir written by Howard recently – they realised that they were in the same Acomb Maternity Hospital premature baby ward after being born there within six days of each other in April 1942.
Both men's mothers also told them the story of an unexploded bomb that had fallen in the hospital garden - where mums and their newborn babies had not been evacuated.
In the early hours of April 29, 1942, York was heavily bombed by around 70 German aircraft in a Baedeker raid — one of a series of Luftwaffe attacks on historic British cities thought to have been ordered as reprisals for RAF bombing of Lübeck and other German towns. The York raid killed more than 90 civilians and caused injury to hundreds more.
Howard, 84, left York in 1964 and after working at Courtaulds and Shell, was introduced to the world of process control instrumentation and had a career with US based Taylor Instruments with work taking him across the UK, Europe, the Persian Gulf and Russia.
He said: “I’d never been on TV but had a lifetime of experiences nonetheless, and my daughter Sara persuaded me to write a book for the family as a record of my life, my work, my friends and the interesting people I met along the way – including 'Brad' (David Bradley) , as he was known to his teenage friends.
“And here’s the remarkable part.
“Last June, I went to visit David at home and we chatted as he told his own stories of the people he had met and worked with — from Cookes on Haxby Road to becoming a star in his own right.
“I gave David a copy of my little life story, wondering whether he would ever get around to reading it.
“A few days later, Brad rang me utterly amazed.
“He said ‘You know that bit in the book where your mother told you that an unexploded bomb had fallen in the garden of Acomb Maternity Hospital where mothers and their newborn babies had not been evacuated?
“’Well my mother told me the exact same story.’
“This extraordinary experience only came to light when David read the book."
David said: "I never shared the story of the unexploded bomb, apart from when we drove the kids past the site when we came back to Acomb.
"As soon as I read it in Howard's book I rang him up straight away.
"We never talked about our childhoods, and we certainly never talked about the war."
Howard said: “We first became friends at Vickers, formerly known as Cooke, Troughton and Simms, but referred to by most York locals simply as ‘Cookes.’
“For 67 years David and I remained in contact throughout our very different careers.
“We’ve met at the home in Leamington Spa he shares with his wife Rosanna, and as two old mates enjoyed a few drinks at the famous Dirty Duck pub in Stratford-upon-Avon, the home of the RSC.
“By then, Brad was playing leading roles at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and signing autographs where his picture hangs on the pub wall alongside his peers.
“He’d also become well-known on both television and the big screen.”
David said he left York in 1966 to go to drama school in London and has returned many times to perform here - his sister Joan still lives in Acomb with her husband Kevin.
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