[1] James held well-known and controversial views on the importance of meritocracy and took very seriously "the University's obligation to be a cultural and educational force in the region".

He held that able children are a nation's most precious asset, and that the academically gifted will best develop their talents in company with their peers.

In the 1950s and 1960s it required considerable moral courage to stand out against the dominant educational opinion, which had settled dogmatically upon scrapping grammar schools in favour of the supposedly more egalitarian comprehensive system.

It was the essence of his philosophy that grammar schools should serve as ladders, giving all levels of society access to the highest places in the land.

The institution which he helped to shape exhibited many characteristics of Oxford; James stressed that at least half the students should live on the campus; he housed them in separate colleges which were conceived not simply as halls of residence, but as the centres of the university's social and academic life.

To create the closest possible relationship between teacher and taught, tutors as well as students were given rooms in the colleges; and the tutorial became the basic form of instruction.

James' prescription for running a university was simple: He proved more successful than many of his peers in dealing with the student troubles of the 1960s.

His Elements of Physical Chemistry, written in collaboration with another master during his Winchester period, became a standard school textbook.

In 1970, the British Secretary of State for Education and Science, Margaret Thatcher, asked James to chair a government inquiry into teacher training.

The James Report received opposition from the National Union of Teachers, but the Government and the preponderance of opinion supported its recommendations.

He had become blind, and fell in his home in North Yorkshire onto a miniature orange tree: a twig penetrated his eyeball and pierced his brain.