Born in
London, Adair was the son of Colonel Edward A. Adair, a
Confederate States Army officer who declined to take the oath of amnesty after the
American Civil War and went into exile. He was educated at
London University and
Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he won the Gladstone Memorial Prize. Rejected for military service during the
First World War for medical reasons, he became a senior history master at
Felsted School. He became a senior lecturer in 1919 at
University College, London, and went to
McGill University in 1925 as associate professor, eventually becoming chairman of the History Department from 1942 to 1947. He retired from McGill University in 1954 and died in
Austin, Texas a year later. A fellow of the
Royal Historical Society, he was President of the
Canadian Historical Association for 1935–1936. ==References==