Thanks hippy, it was enough to let me sort it.
(1) Opening 'File', the Workspaces entry in the list was greyed out.
(2) For File>Options>Editor, I selected Use Project Workspace and made sure the content below this were not selected
(3) Workspace under 'File' now solid.
On restarting the program it did not load the recent files.
Seems a bit odd that selecting Workspace has this effect but lets not worry about that.
Thanks again
Len