James was born in London in 1979. He spent nine years in the British Army, serving in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan, before attending graduate journalism school in Austin, Texas. Since 2012 he has freelanced in the US, the Horn of Africa and further afield. He has written about political unrest, humanitarian crises; warfare, post-traumatic stress disorder and moral injury; religion, business, coffee, fashion, film, rap, religion, chewing khat, running with hyenas, and much more. His work has appeared with the Spectator, Irish Times, The New Humanitarian, BBC News, Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, Al Jazeera, Foreign Affairs, CNN, Deutsche Welle, South China Morning Post, Catholic Herald, The Spectator and The Critic.
He focuses on writing features, taking his own pictures. He has also done radio, including the BBC's From Our Own Correspondent. A failed linguist, he can be found flicking through phrasebooks to wreak confusion by speaking pidgin Amharic, Somali, Tigrinya, Arabic, French, Spanish and Portuguese in a British accent, which also causes confusion in the US. He writes in an effort to try get a handle on what it is all about. For now the answer remains elusive.
He has written what might be a book were it not languishing in the unpublished void, about his army experiences and the challenges of leaving the military while adjusting to a strange new civilian world and dealing with trauma from Iraq and Afghanistan. It can be read online at delusions.substack.com.