LONDON Sir Robert Rhodes James, a prolific historian whose books included biographies of kings and prime ministers, has died at age 66. Rhodes James died Thursday at his home in Great Gransden, Bedfordshire, his family said. The cause was not announced. Rhodes James knew politics from the inside, serving a clerk the House of Commons for a decade and three years a a senior aide to UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim, before being elected to the House of Commons as a Conservative Party candidate in 1976. He represented his Cambridge district until standing down in 1992. A graduate of Oxford University and a fellow of the Elite All Souls College, Rhodes James published his first work in 1959, a biography of Lord Randolph Churchill, the father of Winston Churchill. He won acclaim with his next book, a life of Lord Rosebery, who became prime minister in 1894. In 1965, Rhodes James published Gallipoli, being the first historian to use unpublished papers from the official inquiry into the disastrous Dardanelles campaign in 1915. In 1970, Rhodes James published Churchill, a Study in Failure: 1900-1939, examined the frustrations and failures of Winston Churchill before he became Britain's wartime prime minister.

As a lawmaker, Rhodes James believed in one-nation conservatism, and was not always in sympathy with the more combative style of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. In 1990, near the end of Thatcher's last term, Rhodes James spoke harshly in the House against the government's tactics in forcing through a piece of legislation. The growing belief on the government benches that any opposition is treachery is a course towards disaster, because the House which I have served for 20 years is based on debate, discussion, agreement and disagreement, he said.

Once that is destroyed, the heart and soul of the House is destroyed, and with it the heart and soul of British democracy. (AP)