He is now best known for the sectarian slant he adopted the 1930s, aimed at Irish-Scots, and as an activist working on behalf of the Scottish Party.
[1] His biographer George McKechnie wrote "His modern Scottish reputation is grounded almost exclusively on his obsessive campaigns against Irish Catholics.
"[2] He was born in Leith on 2 August 1899 into a Presbyterian family, the eldest son of the journalist Charles Thomson and his wife Mary.
Brown, was the "exclusivist racial nationalism" of Presbyterians, dating from the early 1920s and their distancing from the UK Labour Party, and associated with the Church union in Scotland.
[16] For Thomson, 1935 and the publication of his book Scotland: That Distressed Area marked the end of his involvement in Scottish politics that had been pursued covertly.
[33] Thomson married in 1926, in Oslo, Else Ellefsen (died 1957), whose portrait had been painted by Eric Robertson (1887–1941) of the Edinburgh Group.