David Robert Alexander Thomson was born in British colonial India to Scottish parents.
Unable to continue at school, he was sent to the home of his maternal grandmother in Nairn, Scotland, where he was taught by private tutors.
At this time he also started to tutor a daughter of an Anglo-Irish family, the Kirkwoods, at Woodbrook House in County Roscommon, Ireland.
Among his most notable works are three memoirs: Woodbrook (1974), reflecting a ten-year period from 1932 when he visited Ireland regularly, tutoring Phoebe Kirkwood; In Camden Town (1983), describing his life and neighbours in London in the 1950s and 60's; and Nairn in Darkness and Light (1987), where he revisits his childhood years spent in his mother's mother's home in Scotland.
[citation needed] Thomson's papers, including BBC scripts and correspondence, are held by the National Library of Scotland.