His father had worked in a variety of jobs around the world, as a lumberjack in Canada, as a combatant in the Spanish American War, as a lay preacher, and eventually as a writer.

[2] Having volunteered for the Special Operations Executive (SOE), James was parachuted into Yugoslavia in late 1943 after two earlier attempts were unsuccessful.

He arrived at Kolasin near the Montenegrin-Albanian border to give medical support to Yugoslav Partisans who were part of a resistance movement against the occupying German forces.

He acted as assistant director to Mr (later Sir) Herbert Seddon and together they arranged orthopaedic training programmes which were to gain national and international reputations.

As chairman of the Specialist Advisory Committee in Orthopaedics he persuaded the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh to establish an exit examination toward the end of higher surgical training in orthopaedics (FRCSEd (Orth), which subsequently became the Intercollegiate Specialty Fellowship in 1990 and was subsequently adopted as the norm for all surgical specialties in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

[5] After retiring from the Edinburgh chair in 1979, James worked as director of orthopaedic services in Kuwait and later in Saudi Arabia.