Bottrall matriculated in 1926 and received Cambridge University's Charles Oldham Shakespeare Scholarship in 1927. After graduation he worked at the Universities of Helsinki and Princeton and then became Professor of English at Raffles University, Singapore. During and after the Second World War he was a British Council Representative in Sweden, Rome, Brazil, Greece and Japan and then, until retirement, was Chief of the Fellowship and Training Branch, Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations at Rome.