He was born on 20 March 1916 the son of George Watson and his wife, Elizabeth Layborn Gall. He was educated at the
Merchant Taylors' School, then studied history at
St John's College, Oxford where he graduated MA in 1939. He was a Harmsworth Senior Scholar at
Merton College, Oxford, from 1939 to 1942. After serving at the
Ministry of Fuel and Power during the
Second World War he returned to Oxford as a postgraduate student and tutor at
Christ Church, where he then established an international reputation as an historian of the eighteenth century. This led to him being asked to contribute the volume on The Reign of George III for the
Oxford History of England following the death of Richard Pares. In 1966 he became
principal of
St Andrews University in
Fife, Scotland and served this role successfully for 20 years. In 1968 he was elected a Fellow of the
Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were
Anthony Elliot Ritchie,
Norman Davidson,
Robert Schlapp and
Neil Campbell, Lord Balerno.
DePauw University awarded him an honorary doctorate (DLitt) in 1967. In 1972 he received a further honorary doctorate in Humane Letters (DHum) from St Andrews. He announced that he planned to retire in September 1986 but died in June of that year during a visit to
London. ==Family==