Gavin Henderson was born in London, and educated at Nottingham High School and Latymer Upper School. He came up to Cambridge in 1928 as an exhibitioner at Selwyn, and took Firsts in both parts of the Historical Tripos. He then studied for his doctorate under Harold Temperley (‘The European Concert June 1854-July 1855’, completed in 1934), as well as supervising undergraduates and lecturing on current affairs for the Extra Mural Board and the WEA. In 1933 he was appointed to a lectureship in the History Department of the University of Glasgow. He produced a stream of articles, mostly concerning foreign policy and diplomacy in the 1850s, based on extensive research in British, German and Austrian archives. During the Second World War he lectured for the Ministry of Information and the Central Committee for Adult Education in His Majesty’s Forces, culminating in a lecture tour to troops in the Middle East and North Africa during the autumn of 1944. He returned to Glasgow University in January 1945 but agreed to undertake a further short tour in the Mediterranean on behalf of the RAF, during which he was killed in an air crash near Athens in June 1945, aged 36.