[5] He joined the Royal Navy as an officer and served in the North Atlantic and the Pacific oceans during the Second World War, before going up to Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1947.
[2] As The Scotsman summarised, Donnison was thus among a "distinguished group of social administration experts at LSE in the 1950s and 1960s – notably Titmuss, Brian Abel-Smith, Peter Townsend, Roy Parker, John Grieve and Tony Lynes"; with a "profound commitment to eradicating poverty of income and opportunity, [they] had a deep and lasting influence on the development and growth of Britain's welfare state.
"[4] Here, he focused on housing and planning; he received a major grant from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation to study the social effects of the Rent Act 1957.
[2] The SBC was abolished by the Thatcher administration, but Donnison later recalled that its work entailed him meeting some of the poorest people in the country; for him, it was "radicalising" experience and he returned to studying poverty.
[6] According to his obituary in The Guardian, Donnison was "one of a group of outstanding academics who played an important part in shaping social policy during the 1960s and 70s, and, in his case, well beyond.
[2] In retirement, Donnison continued to write, authoring Policies for a Just Society (1997) and Speaking to Power: Advocacy for Health and Social Care (2009); but he was also a keen windsurfer, painter, draughtsman and poet, and he took up playing in a ceilidh band.
He was well-settled in Scotland, and lived in Glasgow for the rest of his life, although he spent long periods of time on Easdale island.