ONE OF Keighley’s best-known Victorian figures has become the subject of a new book.

Isaac Holden’s great-great-grandson has written the first full biography of the wool magnate, inventor and radical Liberal MP.

Holden’s Ghosts: The Life And Times Of Sir Isaac Holden portrays the story of the man who gave his name to Oakworth’s village park.

Tony Holden tells how the ‘self-made man’ overcame financial ruin to make a fortune as a pioneering woolcomber, first in revolutionary France then in Bradford.

Sir Isaac built a massive Italianate mansion in Oakworth with grounds that included the grotto-like caves that remain in the park to the present day.

Mr Holden, who lives in Nottingham, said his book was the first complete biography of Isaac Holden, and is based on extensive personal, political and business papers that his own father donated to Bradford and Leeds university archives.

He said: “The book has already attracted considerable interest from local history societies and the Oakworth Society.”

Mr Holden decided to write the biography while in France attending the launch of a book about his great-grandfather’s French-based business.

He said: “My book took four years to write. It is the tale of a man of contradictions and conflicts in his personal, business and political life.

“Overcoming the stigma of an early business failure in Bradford and struggling with the loss of his first wife, he made his fortune by starting a wool combing business in revolutionary France in 1848.”

Isaac fought a long and bitter battle with his partner Samuel Lister for control of the French company, Isaac going on tour set up the massive Alston Works in Thornton Road, Bradford, while Samuel built mighty Manningham Mills.

Mr Holden said: “Isaac’s sons and nephews then played key roles in his business life, but his less than partial treatment of them led to a deadly rivalry for his approval.

“He was deeply patriarchal; one of his daughters, Margaret Illingworth, became an early suffragette.”

Radicalised by his poverty-stricken upbringing and discrimination for holding Nonconformist views, Isaac became an MP in 1865, eventually representing Keighley.

Mr Holden added: “He worked for the final abolition of slavery, electoral reform, Irish Home Rule, and church disestablishment. Although supporting radical causes, as a capitalist and rugged individualist he was opposed to most factory reform."

The book is available e-mailing the author at arnholden@gmail.com, or from the Saltaire bookshop, the Grove bookshop in Ilkley and Bradford Industrial Museum.