His major lifetime influences have been his service with the Australian Army in Papua and Dutch New Guinea during the crucial campaigns that turned back the "invincible" Japanese Army in World War Two; and his diplomatic career, including Ambassador, High Commissioner and Head of Mission in a variety of posts, over a period of some twenty years. As an economist - and having grown up in the Great Depression of the 1930s - he has sought to define policies more amenable to peaceful change and prosperity for us all. He has supported his wife's charitable campaigns, including her initiative of "Ihr Anruf Hilft" ("Your Call Helps.") He launched "The Democratic Initiative for Victory Over Want (VOW)" in 2002. His latest book "The Tyrannies of the Rich" is scheduled for publication late in 2011 or early 2012. His memoirs, brought together in several volumes entitled "A Lazy Incompetent Life", cover both his official duties and his personal life. Due for publication in 2012, the memoirs record his dealings with the great and powerful as well as his marriages and occasional flirtations, his sporting adventures and the excitement and fun he has found even in the most challenging situations. The first volume of "A Lazy Incompetent Life" will be published on Kindle in just a few days time. You can read it on Kindle devices and also on IPad, IPhone touch, PC, Mac, Blackberry, and Android-based devices.

James Cumes, a Doctor of Economics of the University of London, is the author of "America's Suicidal Statecraft: The Self-destruction of a Superpower" published in 2006. It predicted the Global Financial Crisis in intuitive and professional detail. By reviewers, he has been called a "renaissance man" because he has also published several novels, including a recent collection of sexy short stories called suggestively "Dirty Weekend." He has written a book on human behaviour entitled The Human Mirror: The Narcissistic Imperative in Human Behaviour, and in March 2003 published the novels The Hedonists, Haverleigh and Operation Equalizer at the Frankfurt Book Fair. More recently, in August 2010, he launched the intriguing novel The Young Bug with the subtitle of A Miracle of Everlasting Youth. You might think you are getting old but The Young Bug tells you that any time now the tide might start coming in instead of going out and you will get not older but younger. You could stay young forever.
James has had a colourful career around the world, rich in experience of war and peace, love and hate, the violence, greed and evil that move men and women, their lusts and the care that can sometimes lead them to greatness.
To put the above in more standard CV fashion,
James graduated in Arts (Queensland) and Diplomatic Studies (Canberra) and is a Doctor of Philosophy (London). After soldiering as a teenager in Papua and Dutch New Guinea in World War II and filling fascinating diplomatic posts in Paris, Geneva, London, Bonn and Berlin, he became Ambassador to the European Union and several individual countries, High Commissioner to Nigeria and visiting Ambassador to a dozen other West African countries, Permanent Representative to the United Nations and UNIDO in Vienna, Governor on the Board of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and Australian representative at UN and other meetings around the world. 

He has written a dozen books: on history, economics, philosophy and government and four novels. Because of its historical content and its recall of his wartime experiences, Haverleigh tends to be his favorite; but The Hedonists draws realistically on his dipomatic life,its shallow self-interest and sexual indulgence as well as its potential for more noble enterprise. Operation Equalizer is a warning of the ultimate terror, based especially on his background as Governor on IAEA. Dirty Weekend and The Young Bug are his latest fiction and, he alleges, his most entertaining.
He is married to an Austrian, Heide Schulte von Bäuminghaus who is herself a successful author, especially of the popular - and amusing - Diplomatic Carousel. With their daughter, Kim, they move between homes in Australia, Austria, Monaco and the South of France