Rhodes James was born in India as the third son of Colonel William and Violet Rhodes James. His father's cousin was the ghost-story writer M. R. James and the family had links to clergy, lawyers, diplomats, soldiers and sailors who had served across the British Empire. Having begun his education in private schools in India, Rhodes James returned to England to attend Sedbergh School and then Worcester College at Oxford University. In 1956, he married Angela Robertson. They had four daughters.
Early career
Between 1955 and 1964, Rhodes James worked in the Clerk's Department of the House of Commons, first as a Clerk and then, from 1961, as a Senior Clerk. During this time, his first book, a biography of Lord Randolph Churchill, was published in 1959. His next book, An Introduction to the House of Commons was awarded the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. He wrote 'Rosebery, a biography of Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery and Gallipoli'', a reappraisal of the ill-fated Gallipoli Campaign. He then became a fellow of All Souls College in Oxford. There, having left his Commons post, in 1964, he engaged in researching the papers of J. C. C. Davidson full-time between 1965 and 1968. In 1968, he became Director of the Institute for the Study of International Organisation at the University of Sussex, before moving to work as Principal Officer in the Executive Office of the then Secretary General of the United Nations, Kurt Waldheim, in 1973. While at Sussex, he wrote a revisionist biography of Winston Churchill's years between 1900 and 1939 that argued that there were substantial reasons for Churchill's judgement to be questioned by his contemporaries. He also edited eight volumes of Churchill's speeches.
Member of Parliament
In 1976, Rhodes James became a Conservative Member of Parliament after winning the by-election for the marginal seat of Cambridge vacated by David Lane. Despite strong challenges from the Social Democratic Party in the subsequent 1983 and 1987 general elections, he held the seat until his retirement at the 1992 general election. A self-described moderate one-nation Tory, Rhodes James's views found little favour with Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher and he never progressed beyond the post of Parliamentary Private Secretary at the Foreign Office. He came to resent his lack of promotion and, using the subtitle of his Churchill biography, dubbed his political career "a study in failure". He was, however, knighted in 1991. Among his works written and published while an MP, Rhodes James wrote two more highly praised biographies, both with official and exclusive access to private papers: Anthony Eden, a sympathetic biography of the former prime minister; and Robert Boothby: A Portrait of Churchill's Ally, an account of the life of the maverick backbencher. Several of his biographies, and particularly his edition of the diaries of Sir Henry 'Chips' Channon, were later criticised for suppressing their subject's homosexuality or bisexuality. In March 2013, documents released from Margaret Thatcher's private archive included a note from the Government's Chief Whip to the Foreign Secretary describing prevailing attitudes among some Tory MPs at the time. It described Rhodes James as "hopelessly defeatist, depressed and disloyal".
After Westminster
After standing down from Parliament in 1992, Rhodes James lobbied unsuccessfully for a peerage. He later held several visiting professorships at American universities before his death, aged 66, in 1999.
