He was educated at Carre's Grammar School, Sleaford and Trinity College, Oxford and was a member of its University Challenge team in 1983.

In 1992, he directed and produced the documentary A Journey Home with the model, Iman, on the famine and civil war in her native Somalia.

[5] In 1997, Williams directed and produced a ground breaking television series with Reporter, Peter Taylor, on the history of the Provisional IRA and Sinn Féin, Provos.

His documentary, Journey to the Killing Fields, included an interview with Pol Pot's deputy, Nuon Chea before his arrest on war crimes charges.

[12][13] His 2019 novel, Witchfinder was set inside the British intelligence services in the years following the defection of Kim Philby in 1963, and tells the story of spy catcher, Peter Wright's misguided attempt to prove the existence of a master spy at the top of MI5 and to purge 'the Establishment' of those he suspected of communist sympathies.