Robert Thomson was born in Vancouver in 1940. He graduated from West Vancouver High School in 1958 then went to the University of British Columbia where he graduated in 1962 with a first class honors degree in French and Italian. While doing his B.A. Thomson was awarded a one year scholarship to attend the University of Florence; he also received a Woodrow Wilson fellowship (1962) which he used to attend Yale University. He received his PhD from Yale in 1966. (Thomson says that one of his biggest thrills in life was to see two much-admired people on the same stage as himself: Barbara Tuchman and “Duke” Ellington.) After a teaching career Thomson took early retirement (1995) and set up his own publishing house, Godwin Books. (www.godwinbooks.com) He has published several of his own books and has been instrumental in reprinting and gaining recognition for the books of his great-uncle, George Godwin (1889-1974).
Florence, Dante and Me 