[1] He was educated at Sir George Monoux Grammar School, Walthamstow, and was then a Scholar of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, from 1931 to 1934. where he took first-class honours with distinction in both parts of the Historical Tripos.
[2] In his preface to the Pelican edition (1966) of Europe Since Napoleon, Thomson wrote that he had attempted to present "the history of the last 150 years of European civilisation in a new way".
He listed the phases as "Revolution, War, Dictatorship, Empire" and sets out to show how each gave place to the next and how profound and permanent was their cumulative impact on later generations.
Much had been made by previous historians of an assumed "revolutionary spirit" abroad in France that had been generated by philosophes such as Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
The philosophes played no part in the creation of this situation which came about essentially because the King, and thereby the entire French State, was in dire financial straits.