[1] Born into a family of Irish descent, son of John JW Reynolds and Carrie Sophia Eldredge, he began his career as a Broadway designer in 1919, for musicals, operettas and magazines, including the 1921-1923 editions of Ziegfeld Follies and Dearest Enemy (1925).

He became a writer late in his life (at the age of fifty) and his topics were broad ranging from horses, ghosts, European travel and Palladian architecture.

Among his many published works include Wing Commander Paddy Finucane A Memoir (1942); A World of Horses (1950); Ghosts in American Houses (1955) and many other titles.

He died at the Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni in Bellagio, a tourist resort on Lake Como where he had spent his summer holidays for twenty years, struck by a stroke on 21 July 1957.

[3] When James Reynolds died in Bellagio in 1957 there was some confusion about his past: his place of birth has been indicated by several sources in New York, Virginia and Ireland.