David James (1919 - 1986)

David Pelham James was the son of Bridget Guthrie and Sir Archibald James. He attended Summer Fields School in Oxford and then Eton College, after which he signed on as an apprentice on the four masted barque Viking to sail to Australia and back. He then went to witness the Spanish Civil War with his father, before taking his place at Balliol College, Oxford, to read Geography.

His studies were interrupted by the Second World War, and he became an officer in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in charge of a Motor Gun Boat on coastal patrol in the English Channel. On February 27th, 1943 they engaged with a group German armed trawlers and David's boat was set on fire and sank. He was taken prisoner and confined to the Marlag und Milag Nord camp, near Bremen, until he escaped in December under the guise of being a Bulgarian Naval Officer named I. Bagerov. Although he reached and boarded a Swedish vessel in Lubeck, he was arrested when he went back ashore to wait for the ship's departure. A second escape succeeded and he reached Stockholm on February 22nd, 1944. This episode is the subject of James's first book, which was initially published by Blackwoods as 'A Prisoner's Progress' and later revised as 'Escaper's Progress'.