Thomson had a successful business career, becoming chairman of the Employers' Liability Assurance Corporation, among other directorships.
[3] In the Second World War he turned it into a hostel for officers in the allied air forces.
In 1943, together with his two sisters (one of whom, Elspeth, was the widow of the writer Kenneth Grahame) he presented it to the nation for use by a Minister of the Crown.
[7] Lord Courtauld-Thomson died unmarried on 1 November 1954 at the King Edward VII Sanatorium, Midhurst, Sussex, of which he had been chairman for 32 years.
His sister Elspeth Thomson married Kenneth Grahame, author of The Wind in the Willows.