A YORK-BORN historian was spied on for decades by MI5, secret files have revealed.

Christopher Hill was born in Bishopthorpe Road in February 1912 to a family of devout Methodists, with his father working as a solicitor, and he attended St Peter's School.

He went on to become one of Britain's leading historians - a celebrated historian of the English civil war - but, along with another historian, Eric Hobsbawm, he also became a member of the Communist party.

It has now emerged that the scholars were subjected to persistent surveillance for decades as MI5 and police special branch officers tapped and recorded their telephone calls, intercepted their private correspondence and monitored their contacts.

The files, which have been released from the National Archives, show that some of the surveillance gave MI5 more details about their personal lives than any threat to national security.

A report in 1950 revealed how Hill’s first wife, Inez, was becoming “sick to death” of his Communist party affiliation, which she had previously shared.

“There seems to be some reason to believe that she is not only fed up with her husband’s politics but also with her husband’s political activities, especially as his political sympathies lead him, according to her, to give a considerable amount of his money to the party,” the report stated.

A subsequent report revealed she was having an affair with another Communist party official.

Hill left the Communist party in 1957, a year after he and Hobsbawm had written a letter attacking the party leadership’s “uncritical support " to the Soviet crushing of the uprising in Hungary.

He had first come to MI5’s notice when he visited Russia as an undergraduate in 1935. On his return a year later, MI5 noted that Hill “has the appearance of a Communist; but his baggage which was searched by HM Customs, did not contain any subversive literature”.

In 1953, MI5 described him as a “popular history don at Balliol … a Marxist and Communist party member” but noted he did not engage in Soviet studies.

In 1961, it noted Hill had become “a strong supporter" of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament but said this did not shed any light on his political sympathies.