Sir Robert Vidal Rhodes James was a British historian and Conservative Member of Parliament. He was born in India and began his education in private schools there, returning to England to attend Sedbergh School and then Worcester College, Oxford. He wrote his first book, a much-acclaimed biography of Lord Randolph Churchill, in 1959 whilst working as a Clerk of the House of Commons, the equivalent of parliament's own internal civil service.

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  • Sir Robert Vidal Rhodes James was a British historian and Conservative Member of Parliament. He was born in India and began his education in private schools there, returning to England to attend Sedbergh School and then Worcester College, Oxford. He wrote his first book, a much-acclaimed biography of Lord Randolph Churchill, in 1959 whilst working as a Clerk of the House of Commons, the equivalent of parliament's own internal civil service. He was a Clerk between 1955 and 1964, being promoted to Senior Clerk in 1961. He won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for his next book, An Introduction to the House of Commons. His following two books, a biography of Rosebery, and a reappraisal of the Gallipoli campaign, resulted in his being made a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, where he engaged in full-time research on the papers of J.C.C. Davidson between 1965 and 1968. He then became Director of the Institute for the Study of International Organisation at the University of Sussex from 1968 to 1973, before working as Principal Officer in the Executive Office of the Secretary General of the United Nations, Kurt Waldheim. In 1970 he wrote a particularly influential revisionist biography of Winston Churchill for the years 1900-1939, arguing that there were substantial reasons why Churchill's judgment was questioned by his contemporaries. He also edited the definitive edition of Churchill's speeches, in eight volumes. He was elected to the House of Commons at a by-election in 1976 for the marginal seat of Cambridge, and held that seat until his retirement at the 1992 general election, despite a strong Social Democratic Party challenge in the seat in the 1983 and 1987 general elections. The seat was finally lost to Labour when he stood down. A self-described moderate, 'One Nation' Tory, his views found little favour with Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher, and he came to resent his lack of promotion in parliament, never progressing beyond being PPS at the Foreign Office, and dubbing his own political career "A study in failure", borrowing the subtitle of his Churchill biography. During his time in parliament, he wrote two further highly-praised biographies, both of them 'official' works with exclusive access to private papers - a sympathetic biography of the Prime Minister Anthony Eden, and an account of the life of the maverick backbencher Robert Boothby. He was knighted in 1991 and after he stood down from parliament the following year, he lobbied unsuccessfully for a peerage, and held several visiting professorships at American universities. He died in 1999.
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  • Sir Robert Vidal Rhodes James was a British historian and Conservative Member of Parliament. He was born in India and began his education in private schools there, returning to England to attend Sedbergh School and then Worcester College, Oxford. He wrote his first book, a much-acclaimed biography of Lord Randolph Churchill, in 1959 whilst working as a Clerk of the House of Commons, the equivalent of parliament's own internal civil service.
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  • Robert Rhodes James
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