Professsor Donald Cameron Watt - obituary - Telegraph Professsor Donald Cameron Watt, who has died aged 86, was a historian noted for his independence of mind and wide-ranging interests; his study of the origins of the Second World War, How War Came (1989), the fruit of decades of research, won him the Wolfson Prize for history in 1990, was selected by the New York Times as its History Book of the Year and was praised by Lord Bullock (the historian Alan Bullock) as the one book to read on how the war came about. Donald Cameron Watt was born on May 17 1928 at Rugby School, where his father was then a housemaster. He himself was educated at the school and, after National Service in the Intelligence Corps as a member of the British occupation forces in Austria, won a scholarship to Oriel College, Oxford, where he read PPE, edited Oxford Poetry and took a First in 1951. In 1954 he joined the International History department at the LSE where he was encouraged by Professor W N Medlicott to pursue his studies of the causes of the war. He was promoted to a readership in 1966, was appointed professor in 1971 and finally took the Stevenson chair in 1981 along with the leadership of the International History Department. There, among other things, he founded an LSE programme on the Law of the Sea, anticipating by many years the need for governments to study transnational and environmental issues in the area of offshore resources. Cameron Watt was a stout defender of the historian's right to be given access to all the evidence. As official Cabinet historian, he had been expected to produce a volume on the establishment of the Ministry of Defence, but he never completed the book because officials were unable, or disinclined, to provide the documentation he needed. In addition to How War Came, he wrote or edited a further 25 books, including the first edition of Mein Kampf to be published in Britain after the war. In Too Serious a Business (1975) he proposed that the Second World War arose out of a breakdown within European society as a whole; in Succeeding John Bull (1984) he explored Britain's replacement by the United States as the primary world economic and political power. He was also a frequent contributor to The Daily Telegraph. An outgoing, gregarious man, known for his stock of gaudy ties, Cameron Watt had an almost magical ability to summarise with great accuracy the conclusions of presentations throughout which he had given every appearance of being asleep. From particularly tedious administrative meetings he would often emerge clutching origami animals or beautifully-drawn treasure maps. In 1990 he was elected a fellow of the British Academy, and in 1998 an honorary fellow of Oriel. In 1951 he married Marianne Grau, who died in 1962. Later that year he married Felicia Stanley, who died in 1997. A son by his first marriage survives him. Professor Donald Cameron Watt, born May 17 1928, died October 30 2014