and write Aspects of Provence, which was published in 1952. He would eventually establish himself as one of the leading biographers of his time; his first effort in this direction being a two-volume biography of Monckton Milnes that appeared in 1949 under the titles The Years of Promise and The Flight of Youth. This was followed by further biographies of the Earl of Crewe and of Queen Mary, for which he was created Commander of the Royal Victorian Order in 1960. He also wrote a life of his grandfather, the colonial governor John Pope Hennessy, under the title Verandah (adapted as a documentary for BBC Television under the title "Strange Excellency", 1964), followed by an account of the Atlantic slave traffickers, Sins of the Fathers (1967). In 1970, he took out Irish citizenship and went to live at Banagher in County Offaly, where he took rooms at the Shannon Hotel, and during the next few years produced authoritative biographies of both Anthony Trollope and Robert Louis Stevenson. Trollope himself had chosen James' grandfather, John Pope Hennessy, as the basis for the character Phineas Finn in his novel of the same name. Robert Louis Stevenson was published posthumously and without revision in 1974. He became a popular figure in Banagher, evidenced by the fact that he was asked to adjudicate at a local beauty pageant and the horse fair, the oldest in Ireland. On being given a large advance he returned to London in 1974 to begin work on his next subject, Noël Coward. Death and commemoration Despite being a successful professional writer, Pope-Hennessy was careless with money. He suffered a series of financial crises and often relied on the goodwill of friends to get him by. He was a heavy drinker and frequented back-street bars and shady pubs where he mixed with a rough crowd, associations that eventually contributed to his death when he was brutally murdered on 25 January 1974 in his London flat, at 9 Ladbroke Grove, by three young men. He had been acquainted with one of them. He is buried at Kensal Green Cemetery in London. Bibliography London Fabric (Dustjacket by Eric Ravilious; 1939, revised 1941) History Under Fire – 52 Photographs of Air Raid Damage to London Buildings, 1940–41 (With Cecil Beaton; 1941) West Indian Summer (1943) The Houses of Parliament. Photographed by Hans Wild. (Introduction; 1946) America is an Atmosphere (1947) The Years of