Richard James Arthur Pope-Hennessy was born in London on 20 November 1916, the younger son of Ladislaus Herbert Richard Pope-Hennessy, a soldier from County Cork, Ireland, and his wife, Una, the daughter of Arthur Birch, Lieutenant-Governor of Ceylon.
13 Facts About James Pope-Hennessy
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James Pope-Hennessy was the younger of two sons; his elder brother, John Pope-Hennessy, was an English art historian, museum director and writer of note.
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James Pope-Hennessy went to work for the Catholic publishers Sheed and Ward as an editorial assistant.
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James Pope-Hennessy left the publishers in 1938 when his mother found him a job as private secretary to Hubert Young, the Governor of Trinidad.
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James Pope-Hennessy enjoyed his time in the United States and made many friends there.
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James Pope-Hennessy had a brief spell as the literary editor of The Spectator between 1947 and 1949, before he decided to travel to France and write Aspects of Provence, which was published in 1952.
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James Pope-Hennessy wrote a life of his grandfather, the colonial governor John Pope Hennessy, under the title Verandah, followed by an account of the Atlantic slave traffickers, Sins of the Fathers.
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James Pope-Hennessy became a popular figure in Banagher, evidenced by the fact that he was asked to adjudicate at a local beauty pageant and the Banagher Horse Fair, the oldest in Ireland.
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James Pope-Hennessy suffered a series of financial crises and often relied on the goodwill of friends to get him by.
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James Pope-Hennessy was "incurably extravagant like his father", according to his brother John, and from 1964 he was faced with insolvency.
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James Pope-Hennessy's friends were among the most interesting artists, writers and muses of their generation: Cecil Beaton, Clarissa Churchill, Joan Moore, Viscountess Rothermere and Lees-Milne.
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James Pope-Hennessy had been acquainted with one of them as part of the rough trade.
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James Pope-Hennessy is buried at Kensal Green Cemetery in London.