James is an engaged, energetic and warm communicator. His bespoke workshops for postgraduates and early-career researchers are sophisticated but practical. As an author and journalist, he has a wealth of relevant experience. He has been a lead reviewer for The Sunday Times for the last ten years, has judged the Samuel Johnson Prize and is editor of The Author, the quarterly magazine of the Society of Authors. He is active in the field of author’s rights and copyright as a non-executive director of the Author’s Licensing and Collecting Society.
As Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Southampton, he lectured on clearer, tighter and more persuasive writing, and developed a social media campaign to hone students’ writing skills. He has since worked successfully with postgraduates on knowledge transfer and writing for non-academic audiences.
His own work includes a scholarly study of the Kamasutra, The Book of Love, and numerous books for Rough Guides. He has presented TV and radio programmes for the BBC and Channel 4, including a five-part BBC series on Italian culture. He is currently writing a biography of a Himalayan mountain, to be published by Bloomsbury.