Christopher James, 5th Baron Northbourne


Christopher George Walter James, 5th Baron Northbourne, 6th Baronet, was a British farmer and aristocrat. He was one of the ninety hereditary peers elected to remain in the House of Lords after the passing of the House of Lords Act 1999 until his retirement in 2018, and sat as a crossbencher.

Biography

The son of Walter James, 4th Baron Northbourne, and his wife, Katharine Louise Nickerson of Boston, Massachusetts, he succeeded to his father's title in 1982. He was educated at Eton College in Berkshire and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he graduated with a Master of Arts in 1959.
Lord Northbourne served as the Crossbench spokesman for families and children in the House of Lords. He was deputy chair of Toynbee Hall and had been chair of Betteshanger Farms Ltd until 1997. Since 1999, he has been chair of the Parenting Support Forum and governor of Wye College. Since 2002, he has been also chair of the Stepney Children's Fund. He was a Deputy Lieutenant and a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.
He retired from the House of Lords on 4 September 2018.
He died on 8 September 2019 at the age of 93.
Lord Northbourne's garden at Elizabethan Northbourne Court near Deal in Kent, set within the standing former outbuildings and upon ancient terracing, nurtured for a century, is reputed one of the finest in England; it is not generally open to the public.

Family

On 18 July 1959, the future Baron married Aliky Louise Hélène Marie-Sygne Claudel, daughter of Henri Charles Claudel, and granddaughter of Paul Claudel.
They had four children: