James Campbell was born and raised in Glasgow. He left school at 15 to become a printer’s apprentice, and later studied English and American Literature at Edinburgh University. Between 1978-82, he was editor of the New Edinburgh Review, a quarterly magazine of literature and cultural affairs. He moved to London in the early 1980s and worked as an editor and a columnist at the Times Literary London.

In 1993, Campbell’s one-man play, The Midnight Hour, about a night in the life of James Baldwin, was staged at the Freedom Theatre, Philadelphia, and revived there two years later. He is a regular reviewer and writer for the Wall Street Journal in New York.