His father, also Thomas Graham Balfour, was a Surgeon-General (United Kingdom) and his mother was Georgina Prentice of Armagh.

Despite suffering ill health, Balfour attended Marlborough College and later, Worcester College, Oxford and in 1880 gained a degrees in Classical Moderations and in 1882 literae humaniores.

[citation needed] By 1891, after his parents had died, he moved to Vailima, Samoa, to live near his cousin Robert Louis Stevenson.

He was knighted in 1917, and served in a few government posts encouraging education.

[1] His 1898 publication Educational Systems of Great Britain and Ireland became a "standard work in its field".