Just in case anyone ever needs to know, if you want to get my attention, you could do worse than sending me a message that says:

Hi Dave. I’m doing a bit of research at the moment on the 1939 national register and I’ve gone down a rabbit hole trying to figure out whether someone who later became a Hollywood star is on it or not. If you’re interested in an intriguing research challenge then I’d love to hear back from you.

That’s exactly what House of Commons Library statistician Georgina Sturge did last November. My interest was instantly piqued and after exchanging a few emails I was soon hot on the trail of the future Hollywood star.

The person in question turned out to be a seriously big star of the silver screen. Georgina had carried out research which suggested that the 10-year old Audrey Hepburn was, at the time the 1939 national register was compiled, living in the village of Elham in Kent. My task was to see if I could find the relevant record in the register.

Audrey Kathleen Hepburn-Ruston was born in Brussels, Belgium on 4 May 1929. Her parents had married in the Dutch East Indies in 1926 and after frequent moves between Brussels, Arnhem and London, Audrey was sent in 1937 to live in England, where she attended a local private school in Elham. It wasn’t until quite late in 1939 that her mother sent for her and had her flown back to Arnhem.

So it definitely seemed as if Audrey Hepburn should be recorded in the national register but searches had failed to turn up an entry for her. We had one major clue; Audrey had apparently lodged with a family called Butcher and I was soon able to identify a promising entry. Edward and Evelyn Butcher and their son George were three of the eight people living at Orchard Villa in the centre of Elham village. But two of the other entries were ‘redacted’, those all-too familiar black rectangles, masking the details beneath. My theory was that the first of the two was concealing the entry for young Audrey. The redactors had done their job well but I felt that I could just make out the ‘tail’ of a character protruding from the bottom of the black rectangle in the year of birth column, which could be part of the number 9 (she was born in 1929).

A few more emails with Georgina and discussions with some former colleagues at the National Archives and we decided to approach Findmypast to ask if they could check the record and, if it did relate to the Hollywood star, to get them to open it.

And guess what…? It was Audrey Hepburn, and the record is, as of yesterday, open.

So, if anyone else has any interesting rabbit holes they’d like me to explore, you know where I am!

The 1939 National Register for England and Wales is accessible via the Findmypast website.