His father, Frank Clifford Thomson, was an insurance broker and Honorary Lieutenant Colonel of the Royal Hamilton Life Infantry, who was awarded the Military Cross during WW1.

He then transferred to the Royal College of Art, where his teachers included Francis Bacon, Rodrigo Moynihan and Robert Buhler, graduating in 1952.

Two decades later, Thomson's work was acknowledged by the art critic, Clement Greenberg, who, when asked if he knew of "any figurative painting today which is large scale and which sustains itself?"

"[6] ArtReview described Thomson's paintings as having "a luminous radiance", noting that he organised his work "with the greatest care for balance of tone.

The art critic, Eric Newton, wrote, "Thomson deals with the undramatic domesticities that were first discovered by Degas, were developed by Sickert and the Camden Town School, and were later taken over by the Euston Road painters.

Fenton, the critic of the Morning Post and The Daily Telegraph, wrote "Kokoshka's influence shows itself superficially in the way Thomson handles paint, the brush strokes deceptively casual and the colours cleverly broken.

The art critic, Max Wykes-Joyce, wrote, "Nowhere anything too pretty or oversweet, just active, breathing, and on the whole mischievous beings limned to the life.

In the 1950s and 1960s, he played various roles in television and films, including BBC Sunday-Night Theatre (1950), Para Handy - Master Mariner (1959) and Three Ring Circus (1961).

During the 1970s, he produced and presented art documentaries for the BBC, including Monitor (Summer in Salzburg), Canvas (Rembrandt's "Family Group", "Lady Howe: Gainsborough"[17] and Turner's "The Fighting Temeraire") and Release (about artist, Ben Nicholson).