Admiral Sir William Milbourne James, GCB (22 December 1881 – 17 August 1973)[1] was a British naval commander, politician and author.

[2] James pursued a career in the Royal Navy, rising to hold a number of important positions.

Following early service on the training ship HMS Britannia, he was confirmed in the rank of sub-lieutenant on 15 April 1901.

During the First World War he served as executive officer aboard the battlecruiser HMS Queen Mary, leaving the ship shortly before it sailed to its doom at the Battle of Jutland.

Hall and James worked together in "Room 40" which decrypted a number of crucial enemy signals relating to the Battle of Jutland, the plans of Roger Casement, and the Zimmermann Telegram.

He was promoted vice admiral on 30 September 1933,[7] and from 1935 to 1938 he was Deputy Chief of the Naval Staff and a Lord Commissioner of the Admiralty.

Other publications on naval matters included: His most notable non-Naval publication was The Order of Release, the story of John Ruskin, Effie Gray and John Everett Millais told for the first time in their unpublished letters (1947), a collection of family letters detailing the romance between his grandparents.

James was the first to publish the full details of these events and to vindicate his grandmother, whose victimisation by the Ruskin family he documented.