Norman Gash was born in India in 1912. In 1933 he took a First in Modern History at St John's College, Oxford. During the Second World War he served in military intelligence and rose to the rank of major. In 1953 he published Politics in the Age of Peel, and after two years at the University of Leeds he was appointed Professor of History at St Andrews, a position he held until 1980. His other publications included The Age of Peel (1968); Reaction and Reconstruction in English Politics, 1832-1852 (1966); Lord Liverpool (1984); Pillars of Government (1986); and Aristocracy and People: England 1815-1865 (1979). He was appointed CBE in 1989, and died in 2009.
